Diaper dependency? What a bunch of hooey! We tried a little experiment in the middle of the ongoing struggle to achieve dry nights. Here's how it went.

Some of the enuresis sites I read had some discussion about something called diaper dependency.

Now tell me honestly, moms – did you ever in a million years dream that this would ever be a term that we’d have in our vocabulary? Just one of the surprises of being a parent – right? In short, diaper dependency refers to the theory that children who wet the bed while wearing protection do so because they know they can. After all, who really wants to get up out of a comfy bed and go in the middle of the night?

The whole idea of a child becoming diaper dependent is a conversation that goes dangerously close to the point of saying that enuretic children wet the bed because 1) they’re lazy, 2) they don’t care, or 3) they choose to. This is not an argument I want to touch with a ten foot pole! As a mom, I know better than to put the blame there. No mom out there is going to deny her child can sometimes be the picture of laziness – no honest mom, anyway. But there’s a big difference between cleaning up a bedroom, taking out the trash, or even getting homework done before dinnertime, and deciding, “What the heck… I’ll just pee the bed.”

Laziness is not a big enough motivator to make a kid want to wet the bed.

On the other hand, we moms know how hard it can be for little ones who are getting potty-trained to be able to know whether they’re dry or wet when they’re wearing really absorbent pull-ups. There comes a time when you’ve got to chuck the pull-ups and try flying without a net. With a diaper or pull-up, accidents are kind of hard to detect. Could it be the same thing with sleepwetting?

So, we decided to do an experiment. We were between pull-up sizes (adult sizes are too big; kid sizes are too small), so it seemed like a good time.

We let him go without any pull-ups for a few days – just to see what happened. Of course, the bed was protected, and he was fully interested in giving this a shot.

Theoretically, it wasn’t really a big deal:

·        I was already doing lots of pee laundry every day anyway (absorbent protection? ehhhh, not really) so a few more sets of sheets really wouldn’t make much difference.

·        We had a good waterproof mattress cover, so it didn’t do any harm.

·        He’s already learned to be responsible for taking care of his skin, showering every morning.

·        I also made a solemn promise not to complain if it didn’t work.

Who knows, I figured? It could work. He’s just about at the magic age some of his relatives were when they suddenly had no more bedwetting. Could this be the perfect storm situation that leads to dry nights?

Nope. It didn’t work at all.

No harm done, in that we were really no worse off than before. And we learned that the whole diaper dependency thing is a bunch of hooey. And we decided to try again with a bedwetting alarm (we did this years ago, but the sensor died before we were able to have good results). And he agreed to let me measure his waist so I could order some new pull-ups that’ll work better than what we can get at the grocery store.

What was his take on all of this?

Now this is cool. Moms, you’ll appreciate this. While he’s pretty sick of having an enuresis problem, it has made him a lot more compassionate about other kids with medical problems or challenges. This kid has never said anything even slightly cruel about another person’s physical challenges. He’s also gotten pretty verbal about his bedwetting problem – and, thankfully, calls me on it if I ever complain or say something to make him feel bad about it. (You didn’t think you were alone in saying stuff you wish you could take back immediately, did you?)

And get this - he’s even written a little book about a kid with bedwetting challenges,

which I’ll publish for him on this site – if he’ll just illustrate it first! (Do you have any idea how much it costs to get a children’s book illustrated?! I pretty nearly had a heart attack when I found out.) My son is always encouraged to hear from other people who have or had the same struggle. So this is his first attempt to help other kids with the same problem. Now that’s something that makes for a really cool kid – and a very proud mom.