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Home › Articles › Bedwetting › Bedwetting and Special Needs Children

Bedwetting and Special Needs Children

How Treatment Varies With Age

By Lyn Mettler

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Mild Disabilities

In children with less severe disorders such as mild Down syndrome or ADHD, development of nighttime continence is usually slightly delayed, just behind those children without special needs.

Katie says her 10-year-old daughter, Rachel, who has Down syndrome, wet the bed until recently, but she never worried about it. "I knew that it was fairly common with Down syndrome kids," says the 38-year-old mom. "I didn't get real uptight about it. It wasn't a major issue."

Instead, she put Rachel in PULL-UPS® Training Pants when she was younger, and GOODNITES® Disposable Absorbent Underpants when she was older, woke her up a few times during the night to use the bathroom and hoped that the problem would go away on its own. "I just felt like when she was ready, she would stop," says Rogers. And she did.

W.C., 40-year-old father of Karl, a 7-year-old boy with Down syndrome, felt the same way. As a respite coordinator for Family Connection of South Carolina, a network of parents with Down syndrome children, he was educated about the issue.

W.C. says it takes longer for signals to go from the brain to the appropriate muscle in Down's children and that they also have weaker muscles, making it more difficult to control urination. "That muscle doesn't have the same strength that you and I have," he says. "Quite often it takes several years for a kid to get [muscle control]."

Since he understood the cause, he didn't push Karl in any way, and the two are now starting to experience dry nights.


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