Has anyone successfully night trained a really deep sleeper? My son is almost 4 and still in pull ups at night. He sleeps sooo hard that he has never ever woken himself up to potty so we havent pushed it. Is there a way to encourage this? Or should we just ride it out until he starts waking up on his own?
-
Our 3.5 year old is still in pullups and still wakes up wet 75% of the time, so just sympathy here!
My sister's son wet overnight until he was 5, and finally she got one of those wetness alarms that would go off when he started to pee. And that finally worked. I know some people are really against them, but it's just a way of making them aware of when they are going when they are asleep. It didn't really interrupt his overall sleep either. The alarm would go off, he would get up and pee in a little potty next to the bed, and then go right back to sleep.
-
There are two things that need to happen for children to stay dry overnight. One is that they must secrete an enzyme that causes them to wake up to use the bathroom and also causes them to produce less urine over night.
No amount of training will accomplish that.
-
Ride it out
Bed wetting up until age 7 is completely normal -
Mine's also almost 4 and does not seem close to night training (or nap training, really, despite valiant efforts by daycare).
@Looch, I didn't know about the enzyme - that's fascinating and I'm definitely going to go read up on this. I've always thought it seemed pointless to push the night training and would love to be backed up by science
-
What @looch: and @Mamaof2: said!
Xander's almost 4 and still in pull-ups. He wakes up dry maybe 20% of the time. We're just riding it out.
-
We're in the same boat. DS will go stretches of staying dry at night and he wants undies and he does fine. Then it'll be days of massive pee accidents. We went back to pull ups and we'll just keep using them until he's more consistent. Only once ever has he woken up to use the potty, and I think that's because the baby actually woke him up, not feeling like he had to go.
We give him a small reward for staying dry over night so he's motivated to do it, but that's all the "training" I think is possible.
-
Same here! Turrning 5 next week and still wet his pull up consistently every night
Thank you for this post. I need reassurance that I don't need to freak out about it and pull out the pull ups cold turkey and go into a nightly bedsheet wetting misery. I will hang in there and hopefully the magical enzyme fairy come visit soon. Sigh. They dont even sell pulls up above 5 years old in Target
-
Does the wetting happen even if LO goes to the potty right before sleeping?
-
our LO1 just turned 4 and still in overnight diapers/pull-ups. a while ago we tried nighttime potty training and after 1 night of disaster i just let it be. in the past week or two he has started getting up to go pee in the early morning instead of peeing in his diaper/pull-up. that happened on his own, without any training. but this morning he peed in his pull-up, so we'll just keep him in the pull-ups until he can go a couple of weeks without accidents.
-
@irene: we use the pampers goodnites and those go by weight. The small/medium goes up to 65lbs.
My son is almost five and I'm not worried about it at all.
-
Dd is 4 and still in pull-ups at night. It's still wet most of the time so we'll keep her in it for awhile. Our ped mentioned it's normal and it takes kids up to 6 years old to secrete that enzyme that makes their body produce less urine at night. So totally normal! i wouldn't worry about it now
-
@Mrs. Lion: I wish I had advice. We thought we were successful finally, but nope our 5.5 yo started up again. It happens once every week or two. Sometimes he wakes up, but when he's exhausted he's out.
-
Thanks everyone! This was my plan so far, but it looks like my daughter, who is two full years younger, is going to be out of diapers at night in the next week or two (shes waking up to go in the middle of the night and dry in the am) so I was wondering if I was missing something haha
He isn't bothered by his "goodnight underwear" so we will just keep rolling 
-
@Mrs. Lion: I think mine liked his too much, so this time I bought a package with a design he didn't like as much as the super heros he had lol.
-
@Boogs: hahaha good call
-
I wake up my 3 year old to use the bathroom before I go to bed every night. That seems to do the trick for us. Otherwise, he will wake up on his own in the middle of the night and half the times his undies are a little wet.
-
@looch: Fully agree!
-
We stop the kids from drinking early on and make sure that they use the rest room before they go to sleep. That usually helps in preventing accidents.
A mommy friend tells us that her 6 year still wears pull up at night because he's too lazy/tired to come down from the bunk bed to use the restroom.
-
@Mrs. Lion: Same here! My 2.5 year old wakes up dry some mornings. Her 4.5 year old sister is nowhere near ready to be dry in the morning. Honestly, I'll take it to have such a deep/good sleeper, though. DD1 has just started asking to sleep in underwear, and promising me she will stay dry (at this point, it's pretty clear her body just can't, though). Since mine are both girls, I think I'm going to have to tread carefully to make sure there is no comparison/teasing.
I personally feel like trying to force night training is kind of like people who swear their 7 month old is "potty trained" via elimination communication because they hold the child over the toilet every hour. Of course each family has to do what works for them, but I feel like if the parent is waking the child to use the toilet right before the parent goes to bed, then setting an alarm in the night and getting up to take a child to the bathroom...then you have to kind of think about who is really "trained" in that situation, you know?
-
@808love: for us he goes to the potty right before he goes to bed. Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night to go potty, and still wake up with A wet pull up in the morning. Grrr
-
@irene: Oh that would be hard! Based on that info, my advice would be irrelevant then.
Just food for thought. No solutions though. We did Elimination Communication (make a pssst noise associated with potty at an early age) and didn't have issues with night time wetting. It is different EC than described above. LO would go potty right before bed. Sometimes we would make the noise to make sure she went.
Reply
Subscribe to our newsletter
- Google Plus
- Stumbleupon
- Twitter
- Facebook
- Pinterest
- Favorite0
21 comments