Nighttime Toilet Training

Age Considerations

• Babies urinate at all hours of the day and night, without a regular schedule or predictable pattern. Adults normally do not wet the bed at night because, if they have to urinate, the bladder sends a signal to the brain, and they wake up in order to go to the bathroom. This signal mechanism, however, develops with age; some children may not fully acquire it until 5 or 6 years of age.

Nighttime Control

• Not all younger children can hold their bladder throughout the night. Some children can do so at an early age, but others take longer to be able to do this. It has nothing to do with desire or will; rather, it is entirely up to physiological development of each child. According to Potty Training Concepts, only approximately 66 percent of children under 3 can control their bladders at night; approximately 85 percent of children under 6 can do so. A child who has not developed the ability to hold his bladder may have accidents throughout the night.

Nighttime Routine

• Building toilet training into your nighttime routine can help avoid accidents at night. First, children who are learning to toilet train should not drink anything an hour or two before bedtime. The more liquids they have in their system, the more likely they will need to urinate at night. Next, have the child use the potty immediately before bed to help avoid the need to urinate after she falls asleep. These two steps can help eliminate fluids from the child's system so she will be less likely to urinate at night before her body develops the ability to hold it.

Training Pants

• A child who cannot hold his urine at night will need to wear training pants. He may wear underwear during the day. At night, however, he will need something more protective to keep him from waking up with a wet bed. If your child resists the idea wearing a diaper again, there are a few options. He can wear training pants, which can become his special big kid nighttime pants, so he won't feel he is reverting to infancy. Another option is to put underwear on over the diaper or training pants so he can still wear his special new underwear, but also have protection from nighttime accidents.

Bedding

• Putting rubber sheets or a protective mattress pad on the bed can provide an easy clean-up option in the event of nighttime toilet training accidents. If a child has two protective mattress pads on her bed, then the parents have to remove only the top one when she has an accident. The other can remain in place so she can go back to sleep more quickly after the accident. Reducing the amount of sheets, blankets and stuffed animal companions on the bed can also ease the clean-up process if an accident occurs.