I just got off the phone with my husband. It makes me wonder while they pretend to "consult" us when what they want is what they plan to do, and they get touchy with any comment or opinion we may have that doesn't agree with it!
My son is 2.5. He wears underwear during the day and has random accidents but in general does awesome. When he started with the underwear, he had been staying dry all night long (about 12 hours), but he was still in a diaper at night. He BEGGED to wear underwear at night, but my husband wanted 2 full weeks of dryness. I really wish that I hadn't told him that he was wet 2 days from that goal (he told me the goal, after I told him). So, we finally allowed him to wear underwear at night, and he seemed to not be able to stay dry as long. He would wake up in the mornings wet or wake up around 5, crying and wet. If we happened to get to him fast enough, he might be able to wait till the toilet.
I am out of town right now, and the last 2 nights (he is saying 4), he has woken up wet, and his clothes and sheets have had to be changed in the middle of the night. I don't know if this is because my husband isn't going in there at the first peep, or what the reason is, but it is happening, and my husband is done with it.
I feel that since we know he is usually waking up around 4-5 and crying out and sometimes making it to the bathroom, it makes sense to let him keep the underwear on, set the alarm for 4 am and take him to the bathroom.
My husband wants to put him back in the diaper. My objection to this is that the diaper never held a full night's pee, and it would wick out onto his clothes and sheets anyway. Also, he may be waking up when this happens too, so he is upset that he is in a diaper, the bed is wet, and we are awake anyway. I don't see the benefit in this.
My husband thinks that he can hold it this long because he used to, and when I remind him that this is when he was begging to wear the underwear and did we miss the window? he then says we can't return to the past (unless it works for his argument).
Okay, who is "right", who is "wrong", and anyone know why all of a sudden he seems to be wetting so much much. There aren't any changes in the house that coincide with this. When he was begging, my husband had been away hunting for a week, but he was back for 2 weeks when we switched to the underwear. Everything else has remained the same.
Thanks for any thoughts, or just for letting me vent.
Update - thank you for the comments about the water, but we get home at about 5:15 and his bedtime is 6:30. Unfortunately, that doesn't leave us a lot of time to limit liquid, and still allow him to have a drink with dinner. It usually isn't much.
We don't tell him that the wet bed is bad, but he will take having to go back to the diaper (cloth) as a negative thing. I just don't want nighttime to be a negative thing for him. And we have the waterproof sheets, but 4am, everything seems to take forever. :)
My frustration isn't with my son, it is actually with my husband. I am okay with the whole training thing, just some curve balls I wasn't expecting. I know that he isn't potty trained yet, but doing great so far.
Also, he doesn't get out of bed at night. At 2.5 he isn't able to go to the bathroom on his own yet, and still needs help. There is a monitor next to his bed that he tells us if he needs us, and I am working on him using his words to tell us that he has to go to the bathroom.
Thank you everyone...I think I just needed to get that out of my system. Everything that you are saying is making sense. I'm not surprised about the accidents, I just expected progression instead of the back and forth. I think that even if I am the one that has to wake up each time, I will take over the morning pee session so that he can have some consistent reaction. I'm hoping that that will help him learn rather than just mutely going when woken up. I might be a zombie at work, but I want to do what is best for him. He is so proud when he stays dry.
Update - thank you all for your continued comments. I was thinking of trying that 4 days thing if my husband insisted on the diaper. Last night he continued with the underwear (probably best until we are both home again anyway), and he had peed a tiny bit when my husband got him up, but held the rest until he sat on the toilet. Unfortunately, he hadn't pointed himself down yet, and peed on my husband! LOL!
I think that we are both in agreement than he KNOWS he has to pee, and is able to control himself, but doesn't know how to let us know, and we need to work on this verbalizing. We are going to get some extra sheets, because we currently only have 2 (and do the trick with the waterproof pad). Since we think that he does know how to control his bladder, I think I am going to resist the diaper. It would be similar to me wearing a diaper because it is inconvenient to wake up to have to pee in the middle of the night. I'm not really expecting him to hold it all night. The 12 hours has always impressed me, it is just letting us know when he needs to go.
I understand the comments about bedtimes. We get this a lot. Those that usually tell me that he should go to bed later, like 8, when I ask them when their kids get up - 7:30-8. So what is the difference between that and what my son does except that it is shifted earlier because we have to get up for work, and they don't? My son needs his sleep. If he goes back to bed after peeing, or doesn't wake up at all to pee, he usually wakes up happy at his wake time, or has to be pried out of bed. I don't think that shortening his sleeping is going to help him with this even though I would love having more time with him at night.
FYI - Most kids are not night trained until 5-7 yrs old.
Daytime and nighttime potty training are different.
Sleep is VERY important, that is why most pediatricians don't recommend waking a child in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.
My vote is for pull ups for now.
Hope that helps.
M.
My son was day trained at 3 1/2 but he was 7 when he was night trained. He was a very deep sleeper and he'd sleep right through every time and wake up in the morning with a soaked pullup. I didn't want to deal with a wet bed (sheets/blankets/pillow/stuffed animals/pajamas) every night and I didn't want to make him miserable trying to do something he couldn't physically do yet.
I don't know who is right...and I'll stay out of that. :) How about some sort of compromise. When we potty trained my son at night, we had no deadline, we simply stopped buying diapers. So we double sheeted his bed and had a change of clothes ready to go. If he had an accident we simply stripped the bed layer (we had a waterproof pad in between to two sheet layers) and changed him. It took a lot less time.
And I know pull ups are just fancier diapers, but it would hold in more of the mess, but allow your son to go to the restroom if he needs to.
Sounds like your hubby is just frustrated. Maybe try again when you are back in town to help handle it.
Just 1 little random comment:
We did it on accident.. but it's actually catching on as a "thing". NOT restricting liquids at all. (My son is hypoglycemic... so he'd down 22oz of hot chocolate milk before bed every night to get him through the night).
Even though it seems kind of "backwards"... here's the general theory behind NOT restricting liquids: A bladder that fills up slowly doesn't send "urgent" messages to the brain. Instead, it's very easy for it to dribble out unnoticed throughout the night OR for the gradually increasing pressure to never send an urgent message (the whole frog in boiling water thing). A bladder that fills up *quickly* however sends a strong signal / is able to be "noticed" quite easily.
Since potty training is the entire SWITCH of the micturation response (peeing) from autonomic (heart beating, lungs breathing UNconscious control) to the somatic (conscious control)... it's really ***all about rewiring***. And it NEVER happens 100%. Adults who are under sudden stress/fear will wet or soil themselves. The moment we are under stress the body yanks elimination from conscious to unconscious control. It happens VERY easily with kids, because the transfer is both new, and at a much lower percentage than with adults. AKA they experience ANY kind of stress and they lose the ability to keep themselves from having "accidents".
So the science behind NOT restricting fluids is to get that nervous system rewire a hand by making sure that the signal sent to the brain is a STRONG one, instead of a weak one. ((The signals sent to our brain are all of differing strengths. One of the "culprits" behind ADHD is that our brains don't prioritize signals the same way that normal folk's brains do... and the reason we "trip" on hallucinogens like LSD is that it REMOVES the priority system. If you've ever hallucinated, that is what you are *actually* seeing, all the time, that you brain just discards 90% of it and applies order to the remaining 10%)).
For kids who are *ready* (sounds like yours is)... it typically takes 3-6 nights of pushing fluids (instead of restricting) for their brains to "catch on" to what the full bladder feeling is. It's super easy at that point, because you just do a couple layers of sheets and H20 proof protectors and just strip one set off.
SOLUTION / IDEA... btw to the not being able to go to get to / use the bathroom on his own:
Have you thought about putting a "kids potty" in his room? That way he just slides out of bed, sits, pees, and climbs back into bed. If he can't handle his bottoms just have him go bare bum to bed for awhile.
And hugs. Even the best men have somehow survived being strangled by their wives.
.
I would hate to put him back in diapers. Are you making sure he's not drinking too much in the evening? I would limit what my girls drank after dinner (depending on how early/late you eat dinner) and that really seemed to help with the night time bed wetting. If I was gone and she was with her dad and drinking wasn't monitored, she'd have an accident. Just a thought.
Oh my goodness, 2.5yrs old and staying dry in the nights. That's incredible. Some kids that age haven't even started the potty training thing, so commend yourselves for that.
Secondly, I think your husband is just frustrated that he has to be home dealing with all this. Men don't get it until they have to do it, then all of a sudden they have a plan.
Thirdly, he might be wetting more because you are not home. But even so, doing so at night, he is way ahead of the game.
Do what was working for you before, keep him in underwear, because going back is going to signal mixed messages and you want him to eventually learn anyway. If all else fails, and he is retracting, then put something on the bed to avoid it being wet and save the night wakings.
Your kid is doing an awesome job at 2.5 at nights. I still can't get over that!
It is common - for no apparent reason - for kids, especially as young as yours, to go for a period of time with dry nights, and then have days or periods of wetting. It's not necessarily a function of something he can control, but more likely a sign that physiologically, he isn't yet at a stage where he can CONSISTENTLY hold his urine for that long stretch. 12 hours is a HUGE amount of time to hold it! I know he had done it, but it's no surprise to me that he is not doing it consistently.
I don't think there is anything you can do one way or the other, with regard to using undies or diapers, that is going to change this. Personally, I'd use whichever you and/or your son prefers (if you want to save $$ on diapers, stick with the undies), and just line his mattress with a sheet, then a waterproof pad, then another sheet, so if he wets, you can simply remove the top 2, and he's good to go back to bed. Make the night time/early morning routine as easy as possible for all of you. When his body is ready either hold the urine consistently, or to sense that he needs to pee enough to wake him up, he'll do it on his own.
Of course, limiting night time fluids and making sure he pees before bed is a must, but I'm sure you're already doing that. I've NEVER been a proponent of waking a sleeping child for any reason. So I can't say I agree with the setting the alarm thing, but if you think that would work for your son since you have a good guage on when he needs to get up, you could try that, if you're sure he won't have a problem going back to sleep.
Best wishes to you. I know this can be frustrating, but it really does all work out in the end.
We use cloth too and I never equated diapers with being a baby so we never had any problems with them using them. With my son (and he wet till he was almost 5) I always told him they were just for protection at night till his body was ready. I bought him a red aio and a red cover and they were his Mr. Incredible night night pants. He was perfectly fine with that and understood it was so he would be more comfy at night.
If his diaper isn't holding a full night look at adjusting your night time system. What are you using that isn't holding? I love the thirsties fab fitteds and a couple of hemp liners. I just bought some pumpkin butt liners and they are awesome!
Bottom line is it's much better to wait until his body is physically and neurologically (and you can't rush either one) ready than to wake at 4 to get him up to pee or to have to change sheets. Everyone needs their rest and no one is going to get it that way.
Sounds like you made your peace with this one, but I wanted to comment anyway... My son was day and night trained at two and a half, but we truly did not do anything. We never restricted liquids, never woke him in the night etc... he;s a super light sleeper and would get up on his own to go pee. Well for a long time he'd come in and wake us up to let us know he had to go. He has accidents when he's sick on occasion even now at 5.
Our daughter on the other hand is 6 1/2 and only just recently has switched from pull-ups at night. She has NEVER woken up on her own to go pee, and is a super heavy sleeper. Her body just matured enough to hold it all night, although she does still occasionally have accidents.
I'd go back to pull-ups at night for the sheer reason that everyone will get better rest if you aren't up for a span of time changing sheets. It's not something he can help yet. You can keep it positive and upbeat and let him know that he is doing great wearing his big boy underwear and his body just needs a little more time to be ready for underwear when he sleeps.
Best of luck!
His bladder is not yet fully mature. I would go back to diapers at night until he was been dry every day for around a month. Getting him up at 4 will not make his bladder mature faster (only time can do this), it will only make everyone tired. Average age for bladder maturity (being able to hold urine all night or have his body wake him if the urge hits) is between 2 and 5, with 6 and 7 not all together uncommon. For some kids it comes much later, my cousin was 12.
I think expectations that a 2.5 year old would be dry all night long is a bit much. My son is 3.5 and he's finally consistently dry all night. But if he's sleeping really deeply, he'll pee and sleep right through it. Sometimes, when this happens, I'll put a diaper on OVER his underwear cause he wants to wear his underwear.
Your husband needs to deal - he's 2.5 years old - he's a toddler, not a teenager. I know it's annoying to wake up and deal. To cut down on the bed-changing trauma, we have a protective sheet, regular sheet, then another protective sheet, regular sheet on top of that. If there's an accident, we just pull off the top set, change clothes, and back to bed.
I am astounded that a 2.5 year old boy has ever been able to stay dry from 6:30 P.M. til 6:30 A.M., congratulations for that.
Hey there. I feel your pain. I have 4 kids and just went through it with my twins now 3 almost 4. I ordinarily would say don't put him back in the diaper because it is very confusing. However, he is young and boys take longer. I kept mine in diapers at night for a long time. Just go ahead and put him in Nite time diapers or something. Don't worry, this will pass and you won't be changing sheets forever.
That's good I am glad you made peace with the situation ( I have 6 kids, 4 down and 2 to go with potty training) I just wanted to say that like pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding this (potty training) to shall pass. Stay encouraged.
I had mine go at 8, their bed time, then I would wake them at 10-11, my bedtime,and have them go, then I would set my watch alarm for 1:30am & have them go again. Then they would both make it till 6:30-7am - No laundry, no pull ups, no trauma to the ego!!! One night waking for me, which after bottle feeding was a piece of cake. After a few months kids told me not to wake them, that they would take care of it & they did. that was 2 years ago. daughter was 3 & son 2. My son never has had a accident in his bed! This has helped 3 people i know, so i know there is something to it. best of luck.
Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that something HAS changed in the house....you are not home mama!! So, that might give him some anxiety.
Second, you may be more "gentle" when son is having an accident, husband may not be.
Third, that must absolutely SUCK having to be aware of his littlest peep to get him to the bathroom in time. Every time you go in there make sure that you take him to the potty, even if he has had the accident. Is there a nightlight on in the hallway? My son didn't like to get up in the middle of the night and walk to the potty by himself (even though it literally is about 3 steps from his room to the bathroom) so we leave the hall light on in case he gets up in the middle of the night.
My last thought was this. he is not potty trained yet mama. He is almost there! But, if he needs you to get him up and if he is still having accidents than he is going to need a bit more help. YOu certainly could put him in pullups, but I kind of think they are a crock. I don't have a lot of advice for you except that he is going to need your help and your husband's in the middle of the night. And YES, it's frustrating....especially for men (don't know why!)
Good luck, L.
A few things that should work are:
1) Take him potty before you go to bed, I am assuming it is at least a couple hours after him.
2) Don't go to the hassel of doing a full sheet change, have a back up place for him to sleep, like in bed with you, on the couch or on his floor. If you have his old crib matress just make it up and slide it under his bed so if you need it you can pull it out and tuck him in.
3) at 2 1/2 he actually is old enough to get out of bed and use a small potty chair in his room, just make sure you have a good night light and 2 piece pajamas
4) go ahead and set an alarm to get him up to pee if you feel this is necessarry, taking them before I went to bed worked just as well for me.
In a couple weeks he will probably get it. Also not being able to hold it as long actually does happen when a child has a growth spurt their bladder may not be as big for their body for a while. My 5 y/o still occasionally struggles with this.
Sorry you hubby is being such a pill about this. I never even had to involve mine. 3 children later he wouldn't even know where to begin, lol.
Stick to your guns, it sounds like your boy is ready to night train.
It sounds like your son isn't ready to stay dry through the night. Get him some overnight diapers or pull-ups and wait till he IS ready. But don't treat it like a negative thing. Every child is different. My 2.5 year old daughter stays dry at night 99% of the time, while my 4 year old just CANNOT yet. It's not behavioural, it's biological and they can't help it. Just be patient and it'll happen soon enough :)
I agree with the pp -that is a SUPER early bedtime. You should make it a little later- and then you would get more than an hour a day with him also. FYI-Have you considered commercial diapers for night? They will stay MUCH drier than I am sure the cloth ones will so you won't have to be changing a bed in the middle of the night.
I am not saying this mean...but i have a feeling it is the bedtime. That is a very early bedtime. That makes it very hard for him to hold it all night. If you push his bedtime back he should be ok. We would take our daughters right before we went to bed (10-11ish). (you may be able to skip this if you put him to bed 8ish) Then my husband would take them about 6-630 am before he left for work. He would pick them up and quietly put them on with a nightlight only. They would go half asleep and go back to bed. I think i was lucky there. Your son is ready though. Mine were trained between 18 mo and 2 1/2.
i know you've already closed the window, but i still feel like i should put my 2 cents in....for starter's your son knows that you and husband are stressing over this and from what it sounds like. your son can see that and it's starting to become stressful, therefore "giving up" subconsciencly.
he may be doing GREAT then all the sudden poof, all out the window...with a lot of patience and time and he'll learn when HE is ready, not mom and dad, just reward him every time he's successful, and try putting plastic around the mattress and under his sheets so when he does wet (my daughter is almost 8 and STILL has plastic on her mattress), the mattress is still dry, have an extra set of sheets ready to go, wipe off the mattress and lysol where he peed, change his clothes, put the new sheets on the bed and throw the dirty ones in the wash....quick and easy clean up
hope it's been better for you
