Life can be stressful nowadays for both children and for young adults particularly when they try out new roles and responsibilities. Bedwetting or the secondary enuresis can occur with the children over five or six years and rarely even with some adults.
In most cases children older than six years who continue wetting the bed do that for psychological reasons.
Psychological Reasons of Bedwetting
These psychological reasons can include significant life changes, trauma and stress. Usually bedwetting starts to occur after some traumatic event that caused deep negative emotions from a child. Needless to mention that in each particular case the reason of accidental change from dry sleeping to bedwetting is related to the character of each child and his family conditions. For example, parents’ divorce may become traumatic for one child and would not affect another child.
The change in family that could potentially cause bedwetting is often a birth of little baby brother or sister. Of course in most cases a child doesn’t wet the bed on purpose, trying to attract attention in such a way and it is out of his control. Some other family-related reasons are parents’ divorce or separation, second marriage of one of the parents and as a result new person in the family (step-mother or step-father), illness or death of family members, tensed relationships between parents etc. No matter, what caused the child to wet the bed, he needs caring and understanding treatment in order to cope with the problem.
Types of traumatic events, leading to bedwetting are also different. For example, car accident may be exciting for one child and traumatic for another. In general, psychological trauma can be caused by natural disasters, war, sexual abuse, sudden hospitalization and a death in the family. All these events may trigger “post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a debilitating condition that is treated medically and therapeutically. In a 2000 study published in the Israeli Medical Association Journal, researchers noted that children who survive car accidents and afterwards report bedwetting can also exhibit other symptoms of PTSD”.
Nevertheless, in most cases something less tragic is behind the accidental child bed wetting.
Accidental Child Bed Wetting
Some daily events like bad fall off of a bike, chasing by a strange dog, breaking up with best friend, financial problems in the family can potentially cause the bedwetting. The more emotionally vulnerable the child is the bigger chances that any of such events can cause a problem of bedwetting. Even watching a horror movie can lead to accidental bedwetting, especially for sensitive children. School problems are often a source for psychological stress for children and teenagers. In most cases they can’t cope with these problems effectively without involving the 3rd party and tend not to share these issues with parents. Thus, they give a stress a way out in a form of bedwetting. In all these cases it is very important to find the reason that is upsetting the child and help him to let problems go through expressing the feelings and sharing his problems with someone, not necessarily his parents. It can be an adult whom he respects and trusts, for example an uncle/aunt, elder siblings etc. It is also important not to focus child’s attention on the problem of bedwetting itself, since the shame behind wetting the bed is already quite stressful for any child.
Life changes may become a source of stress for a child and therefore can cause a bedwetting. “Starting school, a move to a new town or school or going away to camp is often enough to cause bed wetting. Losing a beloved caregiver or learning a new, challenging task can cause a child to feel sad or frustrated, and that emotional pain may present itself as bed wetting”.
Emotional and Psychological Aspects of Child Wetting
Psychologists believe that emotional and psychological state of a child depends greatly on such state of his parents. Therefore a child should never be punished for wetting the bed and if the problem takes place for quite long period the best option is to involve professional who can determine what exactly causes the problem to occur and what possible changes should be done by family members in order to help the child to overcome it.
Specialists who studied and examined the given problem, believe that the main subconscious signal behind the children’s bedwetting is regression and going back to an earlier stage of their existence when they were babytalking, wetting the bed and acting younger. As it was mentioned above, such behavior can be caused by a life change or trauma.
An important factor that influences emotional condition of almost all children is fear. Sometimes a child gets stuck in bed because he is afraid of monsters or ghosts in his dark room. He believes that once he gets out of bed to go to the bathroom for instance, these creatures would do something horrible to him. Having such an imagination, a child would prefer to stay in the bed whole night, even if he feels a need for going to the toilet. Another case when child would prefer to stay in bed despite natural urge for urination is when a super active child as strictly told by parents not to run around the house at night and to stay in bed.
Some psychologists believe that bedwetting can be a result of laziness and absence of motivation, as well as of seeking for parents attention, but obviously such causes are the rarest among all described above.
“In adults bedwetting may fall into two major categories. It may either be a pattern
that has existed since childhood, or it has developed later on during adulthood”. Reasons for adult enuresis are various: anxiety, stress, caused for example by romantic involvement, switching to exciting new job or even bad roommates. Nightmares can sometimes cause bedwetting even in adulthood.