Teenager struggling right now

[JenniferSee]

hello! I have three children. One is a teenager and the other two are 9 and 11 years old. All of them have dealt with bedwetting and bladder problems throughout their lives. Their father is not involved in their lives anymore, but both him and wet our beds growing up, but eventually grew out of it.

we have consistently told them that this is something they will grow out of. We have taken them all to the doctor in the past and they’ve never been able to find anything wrong with them. My teenage son is the one I’m the most worried about. He wet his bed until he was about nine years old and it stopped. About two years ago, it started back up again. It was always very light wetting so I was able to just have him wear a pad in his underwear and it took care of it.

Here lately he has been peeing through the pad and onto his clothes and the bed. I took him back to the doctor again and they’re still unable to find anything wrong with him other than he is a very deep sleeper. We have tried different alarms to wake him up, but he sleeps straight through them. I have mentioned the idea of him wearing some type of diaper or pull up to bed, but as a 17-year-old boy he refuses to do it. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance

[CatsandCars]

I see you posted this in parenting support, which is good. Have you told your son's doctor how bad it's gotten? There are medications that can keep you from going all night, you just can't take them during the day because obviously the body needs to remove waste sometime. I hope that would take care of it. Maybe a urologist could prescribe this if his doctor isn't? Are you taking care of the sheets/laundry? It sounds like you are very clear that this is just a physical problem and not some shameful thing. I wonder if there's some kind of counselor you could talk to about whether it would be healthy or appropriate to ask your son to help with the laundry, making it clear that it's not a punishment, just that you're dealing with three kids and three sets of bedding. It also seems like it would be really uncomfortable to be in saturated sheets/pajamas. Maybe he would prefer wearing something rather to having to do laundry.

You may know this, but there are disposable incontinence pads that can be placed under someone to help keep the sheets dry. They sell them at Walmart.

Good luck.