Volume 5 Issue 3 Mar 2015
❌A child who wets the bed is too lazy to go to the bathroom.
✅Any child with unresolved bed wetting or newly started bed wetting should not be neglected and evaluated for underlying medical / neurological or psychological problems.
❌Punishment helps a child with nocturnal enuresis.
✅Punishment may make things much worse by lowering self esteem of child. Punishment only works where a child is making a conscious choice to do such act.
❌Prescribed drugs only will end Nocturnal enuresis.
✅Use of medication alone rarely helps children permanently overcome the problem as when the medication is stopped, wetting returns in 80 to 90 percent of those treated. Concurrent use of behavioural therapy and medication helps for maximum response.
❌The only thing parents should do is wait for their child to outgrow bewetting.
✅Only 15 percent of bedwetting children stop wetting on their own within a year. All children suffering from bedwetting will not simply “outgrow” it. In fact untreated Nocturnal enuresis can have adverse psychological impact on the child.
❌Bed wetting is brought on by poor training.
✅Perhaps toilet training has not been successful, but this simply points to the need for a different approach. In many cases, however, there are other issues at play such biological, emotional or neurological reasons.
By Dr Anisha Landage, Resident, Dept of Psychiatry, MGM Medical College & Hospital, Navi Mumbai
