My 11 year old son is still wetting the bed every night. He was dry at night for a brief period of about 2-3 months at the age of 5. He began suffering from anxiety (quite severe) at age 7, when we took him to be assessed at the child and adolescent mental health center. He was diagnose as being very bright, (no aspergers) but with significant anxiety. He now has friends at school, is very good at sports and plays weekend soccer and tennis. Although at times he appears extremely anxious in unfamiliar settings, he has shown a marked improvement. Last year I got him onto minirin (full strength dose) to use for sleep overs and camp etc.. It worked very well. However since I got a new script filled (I wanted to try it again to practice for use on grade 6 camp) it seems to be having no effect (3 full sprays). When he bedwets he does it well - floods the place. We read to him every night, he eats a very balanced diet, gets plenty of exercise and is physically very healthy. Now minirin is not going to work, is this a sign that something apart from his anxiety may be the cause? My other three children were all dry at night by 5)
We would still consider your son to be experiencing primary enuresis, even though he did experience a short period of dryness. While there are always exceptions to the rule – primary enuresis is not typically caused by psychological disorders like anxiety but is generally the result of maturational delays of the nervous system or a small bladder capacity. Anxiety and social embarrassment can be the result of bedwetting so it is important that you down play his bedwetting as much as possible, provide lots of encouragement, and focus on those areas in his life where he experiences success like on the sporting field. You are doing all the right things in terms of encouraging healthy bladder habits which is great! Failure of treatment is not necessarily a sign of a major problem since most of treatments only work about 50-60% of the time. I would recommend making an appointment with your GP to discuss his medication – you could use this opportunity to explore other treatment options as well. Conditioning alarms currently have the highest success rate in treating bedwetting, so this maybe something worth considering. You could try using DryNites as an alternate to medication – this will allow him to still attend his school camp without the fear of being found out. Discuss ways he can hide his DryNites from his friends before going away – some children hide them in the bottom of their sleeping bags, others wear polyester/crinkly pants so that they cannot be heard. Ask his teacher about a discrete location where he can change his clothes in the morning and dispose of his DryNites – you may even find that there is another child on camp who also wets the bed. You could organise a sleepover before hand so that he can have a ‘dry-run’ – this may help alleviate any anxiety before going away.
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