Health Tip: Why Your Child Is Wetting the Bed

Here's a list of potential risk factors

(HealthDay News) -- Bed wetting is common in young children who are learning to control the need to urinate during sleep.

The American Academy of Family Physicians says bed-wetting isn't from naughty behavior or laziness. According to the academy, there may be a medical problem behind the bed-wetting child's behavior, such as:

• Having a family history of bed wetting.
• Having difficulty waking from sleep.
• Being under physical or emotional stress.
• Having a urinary tract infection.
• Experiencing slow development of the central nervous system.
• Having a hormonal imbalance.
• Having an abnormality that affects the spinal cord, the urethral valve in boys or the ureter in girls or boys.
• Having a small bladder.

Reducing fluids before bed and having your child go to the bathroom when starting the bedtime routine (and again just before sleep) will often help reduce bed-wetting, the academy advises.

-- Diana Kohnle

Last Updated: June 28, 2011

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