Bedwetting is extremely common amongst traumatized children. They can wet the bed from time to time or every single night. They can wet it just a little, or they can drench it.
This is all the more amazing when you know that many children with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) drink almost nothing. Some even refuse to drink water when it is offered. Unlike developmentally typical children their bedwetting is often not about having too much fluid too close to bedtime. Nevertheless, if your child wets the bed, it’s a good thing to decrease evening fluids for a couple weeks to see if it makes any difference in smell or quantity if not also in the frequency of bedwetting.
Children with RAD will typically hide the fact that they’ve wet the bed and lie about it. The extra special part is that some children with RAD will also lie to you that they did wet the bed when they didn’t. Isn’t that neat? Just kidding.
Lying about pee (and really everything else) is to be expected. So don’t ask them! You’re just setting yourself up for frustration.
If you can’t instantly smell the urine when you walk in the door or you can but you’re not sure whether it’s in the bed or the closet, you have some options beyond just sniffing the bed yourself. Eww. Been there, done that.
What you can do is send the dog in and see what happens. Some dogs will go straight for the pee spot and sniff. If so, you’ve got a special helper.
A second option is to use an ultraviolet (UV) black light. They are sold to find pet urine, but they work just fine on human urine. The drawback to this option is that they highlight any kind of body fluid, including dog slobber and whatnot. So, when you click it on and see splatter all over the room, it can be awfully overwhelming and discouraging about the cleanliness of your house, and it’s hard to know what is actually urine.
If your child wets the bed frequently, you can call your health insurance company (including Medicaid) and see if they will pay for overnight pull-ups that have been prescribed by a doctor. Also ask your insurance which medical supply company you can use to fill that prescription. Sometimes these medical supply companies will even deliver the pull-ups to your door for free.
Overnight pull-ups comes in all sizes, and I do mean ALL sizes. Think about incontinence pads that are made for adults. If there are sizes for adults and sizes for infants, all the sizes in between exist too. Yippee.
Using pull-ups can greatly decrease the stink and mess of bedwetting. Plus, if you provide your child with pull-ups, and they take the time to pull it down and pee on their bed, then you know for sure that the bedwetting is trauma-based and voluntary. That’s good information. And in that case, stop bothering to provide pull-ups.
Pee laundry must be cleaned the next morning.
Never allow your child to sleep in urinated pajamas or bedding a second night. This has physical, psychological, and relationship repercussions that are contrary to healing. Find a way to wait out your child until they do their laundry. (You can receive specific help on how to do this in a parent coaching session with Strong Love Parenting.)
No matter what the reason for wetting the bed, the child needs to be responsible for cleaning it up. It must be the CHILD’s job to strip the bed and launder the sheets appropriately.
However, until the child has earned enough trust to use the washer and dryer without damaging them, it is wise to supervise your child as they learn to use these important and expensive machines.
You can also attempt to increase your child’s motivation to stop bedwetting by having the child handwash the bedding. It is time-intensive but effective for many children.
Do NOT shame your child for wetting the bed or needing to handwash their laundry. Shaming does not increase trust or build relationship. When you enter the child’s room in the morning you can say in a neutral or even somewhat positive tone, “Good morning. Ah, I smell pee. Strip the bed.”
No arguing, no explaining, no negativity. You state the facts, give an instruction, and move forward. (Sign up for parent coaching to receive help learning how to side-step your child’s arguments and defiance.)
Steps for Handwashing Pee Laundry
1. Carry pee pajamas to the bathtub and rinse.
2. Lay the pajamas flat in the tub and spritz with vinegar from a spray bottle.
3. Scrub the item with a scrub brush for 2 minutes. Flip the item over and scrub for 2 minutes. Flip it inside out and scrub for 2 minutes. Flip it over to the last side and scrub for 2 minutes.
4. Rinse again.
5. Thoroughly wring out the item and place it in a plastic laundry basket.
Notice that each item takes a minimum of 8 minutes to scrub – scrubbing front and back of the inside and outside. Also, you as the supervising adult will need to set the timer each time as your child cannot be relied upon to do this honestly himself.
Next bring the fitted sheet to the bathtub, and repeat the same process. Twin sheets can be folded in half to fit the bathtub. But larger sizes will probably need to be folded in quarters, and thus have more sides to wash, taking even longer.
Next bring the top sheet or blanket and repeat the same process. If your child is peeing the bed often, consider using only a fitted sheet and cheap blanket suitable for the weather yet easy to launder.
Once all pee laundry has been scrubbed it can go into the washing machine, maybe even on a quick wash setting since it has been pre-rinsed.
The point of this activity is simply to hassle the child so that wetting the bed becomes an undesirable activity. The hassle may help motivate change over time.
But even if you have your child handwash their pee laundry every single time, the reason they are peeing the bed is often related to their level of fear and their difficulty trusting others, so handwashing alone does not fix the issue. Handwashing just helps put the onus of the behavior back on the child, increasing their responsibility and motivation to change.
Remember that this activity is NOT meant to shame the child.
You don’t need to be negative in any way. Instead, stay very matter-of-fact and neutral in your words, tone, and body language. The child peed. The child is cleaning it up. These are facts and nothing more.
Your child’s heart is way more important than their pee stink.
It’s hard to remember that when the pee offends your nose day after day. Love your child no matter what – including no matter where and when they pee. It can be super hard, but I believe in the strength of your powerful heart.
Your tenacious love has the power to transform lives.