Second night with bedwetting alarm December 9, 2010

My son, Adam, is five years old. He has consistently wet the bed for about two years now. When he was younger, under three years old I would guess, and we put him to bed with no diaper, he seemed to have dry nights at least half of the time, though I must admit that my memory is a little foggy on this.

Now that he’s five years old (almost 5 1/2), wetting the bed occurs practically every night, multiple times per night. It is soooooo frustrating. Yes, we limit liquids in the afternoon/evening, but it seems to make little, if any, difference. Yes, we have tried waking him up to go potty — this sometimes cuts back on laundry, but it hasn’t – that we can see – made any difference in the actual bedwetting problem.

When Adam was about 4 1/2 years old, we used a bedwetting alarm that we borrowed from a friend for a few months. It was slow, slow going, and any progress that we made was negated by the fact that the battery on the sensor unit eventually died (without us realizing that was the case).

Fast forward to the present, with Adam being 5 1/2 years old and wetting the bed nightly. We recently choked up the $60 to buy a new sensor for the alarm, and we are back in the trenches with using the alarm every night.

Last night (night # 2), the alarm sounded three separate times. Once at 11 p.m., once at 1:30 a.m., and once at 6:30 a.m. It boggles my mind — this means that without the alarm, and without Mom or Dad coming in to wake him up at predetermined times, Adam would have outright wet the bed THREE separate times last night. And knowing what I know about my son, he is not likely to have woken up and finished urinating in the toilet. Oh no, not Adam. These would have been full releases into his bedding while he was sound asleep.

It’s been a long day already, and it’s only just begun May 14, 2010

It’s only 7:30 a.m. in my neck of the woods, but already I feel like I’ve put in a full shift. Mark, age 18 months, woke up at 4 a.m. crying. He settled down when I directed him to his favorite blanket, but he did not go back to sleep. And, it follows, neither did I. So I got dressed at 4:45 a.m. and Hubby helped keep Mark quiet so as not to wake up big brother, Adam, age 4 1/2.

At 5:15 I loaded Mark into the van and we drove around for an hour. I got a coffee and a newspaper (so I could plan garage saling without poking around online so much). By being out of the house, I wanted to ensure that Adam could sleep as late as possible. It is so, so difficult to keep Mark quiet, and our house is fairly small so it’s not really possible to close ourselves off somewhere and wait it out, and Adam seems intent on waking up at at the slightest sound.

So anyway, imagine my surprise when we pulled into the driveway at 6:15 a.m. and I found Adam in the backyard in his pajamas, jacket, and Crocs. I knew right away that Hubby was still in bed and that Adam had gone outside without permission. This is something we have come across before and so I believe that Adam is fully aware of the rules.

Soon afterwards I discovered that Adam had changed out of very wet underwear and pajama bottoms, AND that his bedwetting alarm was switched to OFF. The only logical explanation (and I need to come up with my own explanations because for whatever reason it is essentially impossible to get a coherent explanation out of Adam) is that his alarm woke him up and he then turned it off, went back to sleep, and in the process completely evacuated his bladder into his clothes and bedding.

This all  made for a very crabby mommy. We have been using the bedwetting alarm for 2+ months now, and I understand that at times the alarm might  not wake him up. BUT, if it wakes him up enough for him to switch it off, then I expect him to get up out of bed and take care of business.

Hubby and I decided that as a consequence for Adam’s actions, he will spend the entire day in his room with no toys and no books. I credit John Rosemond for this concept and, while it’s certainly not easy to implement and stick with, it does serve as a compelling consequence.

It strikes me that Adam is nearly five years old, and more and more we need to hold him accountable for his decisions.  In doing so, we need to use consequences that will fully get his attention. It strikes me how ineffective it is to engage in what Rosemond calls “yada-yada discipline” in which the parent uses explanations, talking, etc., as the primary means of trying to get a child to change his/her behavior.