nightime accidents

[houseelf]

My little guy is completely pottytrained through the day. I don't even have to remind him. My friends' kids were pottytrained both day and night at the same time. When I de-diaper my son at night, not only does he have an accident, he sleeps in it for the entire night. It doesn't even bother him enough to come wake us up. He wakes up dry only once a week. (Apparently he has inherited his mom's famously small bladder.)

Does anyone else have experience in potty training in two stages? Should I just wait to force the issue until he starts having more dry nights or should I make this a priority now before he becomes accustomed to wearing underwear by day and diapers at night?

Kelly

I haven't given this much thought, Kelly. Bryn wears a pull-up at night and I feel pretty ok about it. She is a very sound sleeper and about half the time she naps she will wet the bed (when she does nap ). I think this is the stage that most of her friends are at. One of her friends did give up the pull-up at night -- she told her parents that is she needed to pee she would wake up. And she did! For about two months....she too is comfortable sleeping in a wet bed (ewww) and they went back to pull-ups at night.
I would be interested to hear from parents who crossed the nighttime diaper divide!

[SueC]

My oldest is completely potty trained by day and wears a pull-up at night. She is nowhere near being able to hold it all night, so I'm not going to worry about it for now. I think you just have to wait for their bladder size to catch up with them. We did try putting her in panties at night and waking her to go potty, but I found myself changing wet sheets and consoling a grumpy child every night so I gave up. What is interesting is that her 2 year old sister is not potty trained by day but wakes up dry pretty much every morning. Go figure!

[SueC]

I should add, of Maya's 3-4 year old playmates, about half of them are potty trained at night. The ones that are are bigger in size and apparently no training was involved, they just eventually started waking up dry every morning. Since Maya is on the small size this seems to make sense. On the other hand her sister is in the 95th percentile for a 2 year old and does make it through the night.

My 2 1/2 yr old daughter just did this same thing to me a few weeks ago. It seems that every now and then they have little slip ups. My advice to you is to NOT use diapers at night. I found that it hinders the whole process. At Walmart we found these plastic potty training pants that slip over kids underwear. This way when they wet the bed it will stay contained to the underwear itself. Prompting them to come and get you. I cant say my daughter ever came to get me either though. She would sleep in it through the night as well but at least it was contained. On occasion she would go too much and it would leak to her bed a little but trust me these training pants are great. They are plastic on the outside and have a cloth liing that helps absorb. With a diaper they dont feel wet as a matter of fact they probably feel comfortable just peeing in it. Potty training is hard I feel for you. My son was much easier to train.

[SueC]

We tried those plastic pants and they didn't really contain the urine--my daughter might have had more volume, though, since she drinks a lot of liquid.