My oldest daughter will be 4 in April. She has been potty trained during the day (while awake) since 2.5 and has been staying dry during naps for several months now. However, she wears a pullup at night and it's always pretty wet in the morning. Her BFF has an older sister and has recently been asking to wear undies at night like her sis. Said BFF's mom now gets them out of bed and takes her and big sis (ages almost 4 and 5.5) to the potty around 11pm and they both wake up dry. (The 5 year old wets herself a lot of the time if she doesn't do the dream pee.) So, we did that with our daughter a few nights ago around 10:30. She was dry at the time, went pee on the potty, and she also woke up in the morning dry. We were so excited! However, other than the fact that we may save some money on pull-ups, I don't think that this is helping getting her prepared to go through the night without wetting herself. Has anyone else done this and eventually found success?
Thanks everyone. BTW I actually did search for this , I guess not well enough! As frustrating as it is to wait, I think we'll just really start looking at how much fluid we're giving her before bed and talk to her doctor about it in April (unless she figures it out before then!).
I have never been able to bring myself to wake up my 3 yr old to have her go pee. I feel I would rather her have a good night sleep without being woken, and continue with the pull-ups.
Do it. We did it with our daughter and it worked out fine; she is now 11 and never had any issues with eventually going to the toilet on her own after we did this for a while.
Kids' bladders and bladder control develop later than the rest of their body-- that's why kids sometimes wet the bed right into older ages, not just in the potty training years. It's out of their control. I disagree with others who posted that "it doesn't teach them to hold the urine all night" if you wake them. You cannot "teach" that -- their bodies have to develop to the point that they either do hold it in their sleep or their bodies signal them to wake up and go to the toilet in time, and you cannot teach or train for that.
We walked our daughter to the toilet when we went to bed around 11 and she stayed dry all night. And it did continue to work, though one person posted that it would work for you a few times then wouldn't work any more. Give it a try. It will not stunt her potty-training growth. As she gets older you can taper it off and try nights without it. Eventually she will wake herself to use the toilet; if she does not as she gets older, she may be such a very deep sleeper that bed-wettiing is going to be an ongoing issue, and at THAT time you would look into things like the bed-wetting alarms that help deep sleepers awake in time to get up. But for now, yes, do the "dream pee."
Yes I did that with one of my kids, I dont think kids are "trained" to hold the urine all night, I think it happens when their bodies are ready to hold the urine all night. So it makes no difference if you have them "dream sleep" or not. but to me not having to wash the sheets daily made a BIG difference in my life!! And yes of course he did not need that forever. So why not? It will not slow down or speed up the process only it could make your life a little easier.
I make my daughter go pee before getting into bed and most days she wakes up dry (she is 5 and wears a pull up to bed). I don't think waking up a child would be teaching them to go. They should wake themselves up to go and/or learn to hold it at night. My daughter would not go back to sleep if I woke her up. Disturbed sleep is worse than no sleep at all. So why would someone want their kids to feel tired in the mornings?
No, I never took my kids out of bed to use the toilet. I believe it impairs the process. Rather than the bladder maturing and training itself not to empty at night, parents are training their kids to continue to need to empty their bladder. Really it's much better to just diaper the kid and wait til their body is ready to retain urine all night.
Umm, no, it doesn't work. Kids that don't stay dry at night make urine all night long. If you want to do this it will work maybe once in a while, then it won't work anymore. Plus she'll still be wet in the morning.
put this topic in the search in the top of this page. It will show you all the answers to this type of question.
It's another form of elimination control, just with a older child. In reality, kids can't stop peeing through the night until their bladders are able to hold it. The exception would be, older kids who do hold it through the night for a long period of time, but then began having problems staying dry, this would indicate, infection, stress, brought on by life changes like moving or divorce... things like that. So, if doing a late night pee helps, then go for it, but like you said, it's not really training her body to hold it.
We did it with our son. Didn't need to with our daughter. Son is a VERY VERY deep sleeper and would even sleep through soaking wet sheets. It was a bit of an inconvenience, but not enough that it was really all that inconvenient. And it saved a lot of money on diapers/pull-ups. Eventually, he outgrew the nighttime wetting (and that took years---and I don't think it was because of the dream peeing). It is quite normal for some kids (especially boys for some reason) to have occasional nighttime wetting right up through about age 9 or 10. Not every night. But once or twice every few weeks or months. At least that was our experience, and I've seen enough posts on this subject to know that our family is not outside the norm.
For me, it just wasn't worth the extra expense of extra diaper/pull-ups every night, when it wasn't needed EVERY night (but you don't know in advance which ones are which, lol), and it wasn't worth my kid having negative feelings about himself for having nighttime accidents (or wearing pullups at age 5, 6 and 7 at sleepovers at grandma's).
There was a LOT of sleepover activity when my son hit about age 8, and it was simple enough to ask the other mom (in private) to make sure that the last thing before bed (which was usually a little later than his normal bedtime), that he used the bathroom.
hth
Thinking about how much space diapers take up in landfills - ANY decrease in pull up usage is valuable in and of itself.
