Firstly, please accept my apologies for the delay in getting back to you I have had a large volume of questions to answer over the past two weeks. Let me reassure you that his bedwetting is much more common than you think – approximately 10% of 7-year-olds continue to wet the bed and most of these are boys! As with many other areas of development – boys’ bodies just take a little longer to mature than girls. Your first course of action is to schedule an appointment with your GP to rule out any possible medical cause for his bedwetting (this is rarely the case) and to discuss treatment options. There are a number of treatments currently available – some of these are outlined on the DryNites website – it would be worthwhile reading about these so that you can discuss the pros and cons when speaking with your doctor. While many children are able to outgrow bedwetting on their own – by the time they reach 7 years of age I often find that both the parents and the child have had enough. I would avoid waking him at night – this only results in a disrupted night sleep and in the majority of cases does not result in the child learning to wake on their own and go to the toilet. It is no longer practice to restrict drinking – you are better off encouraging him to drink more during the day (tapering off at night) as this helps the bladder get used to holding larger quantities of urine. Limit the number of sweetened and caffeinated drinks he consumes throughout the day – and increase the amount of fibre (constipation will put added pressure on the bladder).

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