To kick off the countdown to World Bedwetting Day on Tuesday 24th May, we’re highlighting the problem of long-term bedwetting. This post was written by Andrea (not her real name), who wet the bed for many years before eventually finding a solution in her 30’s.
young person
Adult bedwetting support group
Are you in your late teens? Do you still regularly wet the bed?
If you are or will soon be 18 years old or older and have always wet the bed, there is a support group for people like you that is run by people like you.
School staff changed my life by understanding my condition – and helping to stop the bullying
Beccie Allen, 20, explains the impact that her wetting problems had on her childhood, including the soul destroying bullying she experienced at primary school. She shares how the committed support of teaching staff helped to turn the situation around and enable her to become the person she is today.
Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI) in teenage girls
Chartered Physiotherapist Lucia Berry treats a number of female teenage patients who experience Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI), as well as other continence issues. In a guest blog for ERIC, Lucia gives an overview of the continence problems that she works with teenage girls to resolve, and highlights how and when young women should seek support for these issues.
Many people believe that continence problems only occur due to old age or in women who have had babies. However these issues affect many different people, at any age – including teenagers – and for a variety of reasons. You may be surprised to know that even elite gymnasts and runners experience continence difficulties during exercise!1.
When trying to resolve these potentially stressful and embarrassing problems, it’s important to find out what’s causing the symptoms. Not everyone will experience continence issues for the same reason. For example, when looking at bladder continence problems in teenage women, some will find they can’t hold their urine on the way to the toilet and have a desperate urge to pass urine. Therefore, it’s not always possible to treat these symptoms using the same approach.
Pelvic floor exercises in teenage women – when are they necessary?
Every year in England and Wales around 900,000 women give birth to children, including 30,000 teenage women under 182. Women who are pregnant or have had children may develop Stress Urinary Incontinence due to weak pelvic floor muscles, so it’s important to ensure that pelvic floor exercises are done during pregnancy and after having children. It’s often believed that it’s normal to put up with incontinence after having a child, but in the majority of cases things can be resolved through exercising the pelvic floor muscles.
I treat teenage women with incontinence in my hospital clinic, but for teenagers that haven’t been pregnant or had children it is rare that they will have incontinence due to weak pelvic floor muscles. It’s more likely that the pelvic floor muscles of teenagers who have continence problems may be un-coordinated, or be hypertonic (increased tension in the muscles). These issues can equally affect teenage boys.
Ensuring pelvic floor exercises are done correctly
Practising pelvic floor exercises can benefit everyone, but the way it which we exercise these muscles is very important. By practising these exercises the aim is to:
- increase awareness of the muscles
- increase control of these muscles
- increase range of movement of the muscles (how much you can relax and then squeeze)
- increase the strength of the muscles
It’s also important that pelvic floor exercises are done correctly; for example, research suggests that many people do not do the exercises correctly from a leaflet4. If you’ve tried doing pelvic floor exercises and things aren’t improving don’t give up, seek help from a professional who can assess these muscles and help you with your technique.
Some other potential causes of continence problems in teenagers are:
- Hypermobility conditions e.g. Elhers Danlos Syndrome5
- Over active bladder syndrome
- Voiding dysfunction
- Underactive bladder syndrome
- Voiding postponement
- Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs)
- Chronic constipation
When to seek support
In teenagers (female or male) if symptoms of continence problems are frequent and causing embarrassment or stress – and especially if they are severe – then consulting a health professional is important in order to establish the cause and the best solution for reducing symptoms. It’s also likely that there will need to be lifestyle changes such as changing fluid intake and bladder / bowel habits.
If you speak to your GP, they may make a referral on to one of a continence clinic, which can be based in a hospital or in the community. These are run by specialist teams including physiotherapists. You can also self-refer to these clinics rather than going through your GP.
If you want to talk to other girls your age who are going through the same thing, head to ERIC’s Teen Message Boards and share your experience or just read the posts others have left.
If you need any help at all, please give the ERIC helpline a call on 0845 360 8008 or email helpline@eric.org.uk (calls cost 9.6p plus the connection charge).
References:
1 Goldstick O and Constantini N, Urinary incontinence in physically active women and female athletes, April 2013 Br J Sports Med doi:10.1136/bjsports-2012-091880
1Nygaard I, Thompson F, Svengalis S, Albright J, Urinary Incontinence in Elite Nulliparous Athletes, Obstetrics & Gynecology Aug 1994 Vol 84 (2)
2Office for National Statistics data http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/conception-statistics–england-and-wales/2011/sty-conception-estimates-2011.html
4Richard C. Bump, W. Glenn Hurt, J. Andrew Fantl, Jean F. Wyman, Assessment of Kegel pelvic muscle exercise performance after brief verbal instruction American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology Volume 165, Issue 2 , Pages 322-329 , August 1991
5McIntosh LJ, Stanitski DF, Mallett VT, Frahm JD, Richardson DA, Evans MI. EhlersDanlos syndrome: relationship between joint hypermobility, urinary incontinence, and pelvic floor prolapse. Gynecol Obstet Invest. 1996;41:135-9.
Teenage bedwetting – there’s nothing to be ashamed of
Today’s blog post has been written by Connor, a teenage bedwetter, who wants to share his story to help break down the stigma surrounding the problem and let other young people know they’re not alone. You can read more of Connor’s story and the experiences of other young people on the teenage pages of ERIC’s website.
I have been struggling with bedwetting for pretty much all of my life, and although thankfully things are improving now, there have been many challenges and difficult times.
When I was a young kid, I really didn’t see that it was anything out of the ordinary – I suppose I just assumed that everyone wet the bed, but obviously as I got older I realised that wasn’t the case and for a while I was very angry about still wetting the bed.
For much of my childhood I wore nappies to bed which may seem a trivial thing to get upset about, but I became very worried that somehow all my friends would know, even though there was no way they could find out. By the time I started at high school I was getting feeling very low about it all – I was convinced that I was the only teenager in the world still wetting the bed.
When I stopped wearing nappies it was good in the longer term, but hard to get into a new routine. Dealing with a wet bed is no fun, and I had many disrupted nights. It was especially worse on school nights of course – if I woke up wet in the middle of the night, there was no way I could go back to sleep without getting up and changing, which meant I had less sleep, but if I slept through until morning, it was always a rush to get changed and clean in time.
One of the biggest issues is the stigma surrounding bedwetting, which doesn’t exist with other conditions – for example I knew people at school with things like asthma and diabetes and they quite happily talked about it. However I would never even consider talking about bedwetting, and up until very recently only people within my family knew. Getting rid of this sort of stigma would be such a huge improvement – if it was easier to talk about it and know that people wouldn’t make any sort of fuss then I wouldn’t have missed out on so many things, sleepovers, school trips etc.
However I think it is important to try and see some of the positive sides. I have always had a lot of support from my parents and my younger brother. Also recently I was staying with a friend for a few days and had the courage for the first time to tell him about my problem and that I would be wearing incontinence pants as a safeguard whilst staying there – I was very relieved that he was not disgusted in any way and was happy that I had told him.
I just want to let others suffering bedwetting that is not something to be ashamed of, and although it might take a lot of time and patience, things will definitely get better.
Connor, 16
The Right to Go: A helpline perspective on ERIC’s new continence guidance for schools
“My son has been avoiding drinking anything whilst he’s at school and even ended up having an accident because not all of his teachers will let him leave class to use the toilet. I don’t want it to be like this for him or other children in the same position.”
“I was called into my little girl’s school last week because she’d had an accident earlier in the day. She’d been left in dirty pants and I had to change and comfort her before scrubbing the carpet in her classroom. Is it fair to me or her that this is happening?”
I work on the ERIC helpline and these comments were made recently by parents who were feeling helpless and desperately looking for a way to resolve these problems for their children but not knowing who to turn to.
They are also, sadly, typical of scenarios we hear about on a regular basis whereby an already upsetting situation has been compounded by a less than sensitive reaction to an accident at school. From calls such as these to our helpline, emails and message board posts we know that children and their families are often left feeling socially isolated with the issue taking over their lives both at home and school.
At ERIC we feel strongly that no child should be suffering in this way and that schools need to take positive action to support the estimated 900,000 children in the UK with continence issues, and their families. A survey we commissioned with the ATL (Association of Teachers and Lecturers) in early 2012 also suggested that 62% of primary school staff in the UK have noticed an increase in the number of children wetting or soiling themselves during the school day over the past five years, which increased to 71% amongst those working specifically with three to five year olds.
This survey highlighted the need for schools and nurseries to put in place effective policies and procedures to support children with continence issues, and the importance of schools providing information on potty training at the time that a child’s place in school is confirmed.
So, in partnership with PromoCon, we launched an exciting new resource last week called ‘The Right to Go’, available as an 8 page leaflet and a more detailed 20 page Guide – both of which are available as a free download from the ERIC website: www.eric.org.uk
They have been designed as a ‘best practice approach’ to help schools and educational settings manage wetting and constipation and soiling problems for the children in their care. They give an overview of the issues, why they occur, how they can be identified and guidance for creating workable continence policies for all children including those with special needs.
The Guide has been written with busy teachers in mind to provide concise and easily accessible information, with a topic on each page to make printing easier. Both the leaflet and Guide are ideal resources for teachers, healthcare professionals and parents to share with colleagues and networks.
I’ve already taken several calls since we launched ‘The Right to Go’ where I’ve been able to tell parents that this is now available and they have been reassured that there’s now a document they can read and take into their child’s school. We’ve also had a great response from healthcare professionals since the launch so hopefully by working in partnership and following this guidance a consistent approach can be made towards helping children in the future.
Alina
I wet the bed and there is no hiding it!
Our story today comes from a young man who we have come into contact with through the ERIC helpline. He is 12 and has very bravely offered to share his personal experience of bed wetting with us, in the hope that other children and their parents/carers could understand what it’s like to suffer from continence issues.
“Hello I decided to write about my problem for ERIC. I am a 12 year old boy who still wets the bed and it is very frustrating for me and my family.
I used to wet the bed every night. I would find out that I had wet the bed because I would wake up in the night and I would feel damp and cold. When I checked I would be soaked through.
When I was little, I would hide my wet bed from my mum and carry on sleeping through, but now that I am older I do tell my parents and I strip my bed myself in the middle of the night. Sometimes, it is pitch black in the house, so I have got a torch and gone to the airing cupboard and taken out new sheets in the dark.
Sometimes the bed is so wet that the quilt is soaking too. This causes an argument between my mum and me. This is because I tell my mum that I didn’t know I had wet the bed in the night, and most of the time I don’t. But my mum reckons I did know and I am just trying to hide the wet sheets from her. But, in the morning she always can smell the wee in my bedroom – so there is no hiding it.
I went to see the Doctor and then a wee nurse at the local clinic. She recommended an alarm that I could clip onto my pants at night. It used to go off like a siren in the night. It did work, because as soon as the alarm went off when I was wetting myself , I would wake up and try and hold it in whilst I ran to get to bathroom. But sometimes the wee kept coming out whilst I was running. Once or twice the siren didn’t go off at all because the wee had not touched the metal clip, so I still wet the bed.
The nurse also told me that I should be drinking much more than I was, especially during school time. Unfortunately, during school I would drink more but then I would have to get up and go to the loo during class – so I found that I was going to the toilet more than I was learning. One of my teachers did understand because my mum had written a note to her explaining that I was training my bladder so had to drink plenty and go to the toilet when I needed. But my next teacher didn’t know about it and he wouldn’t let me go to the toilet during class. But I never told him what my problem was because I was worried all the class would hear.
The most nerve wrecking time was when I went to stay the night at friends. Every time I went I was really, really, worried. I would go to sleep ok and sometimes my mum would give me a tablet to take which was supposed to stop me making wee. Once I did wee my sleeping bag at a friend’s house. In the morning I got changed in my sleeping bag and I told my friend to go downstairs so that I could sort it all out. Another time, a friend noticed that my pyjamas were wet, so I said that I had tipped a drink on me.
In my bedroom I do have a bed protection rule! Every time a friend comes round, I tell them that I have one rule and they are not allowed on my bed. I lie and say that my bed is weak and it can only support a certain amount of weight. Really it is because if they went up on my bed they may notice I had a bed protector, an alarm and possibly a smell because I had hidden the wet sheets.
I have recently had to have my mattress thrown away because the bed protector had leaked and the mattress was really smelly. So I have slept on the floor for a few weeks on bedrolls whilst waiting for the new bed to arrive. During this time, I wore disposable pyjama pants because sometimes I have rolled off and weed on the carpet!
It is very frustrating that I still wet the bed at my age. Overall, the main thing that I feel is guilt! Because I wet the bed it creates so much washing and having to spend money on alarms, disposable pants and now mattresses it makes me feel guilty for being a bed wetter.”
Thank so much for taking the time to share your story with us. We really appreciate your honesty and telling us about how bed wetting impacts on so many aspects of your daily life. We really hope your experiences will help other children and young people understand that they are not alone with their worries and concerns.
Tracy
Do you suffer continence issues in silence and hide the truth from your friends? Or are you a parent that is increasingly frustrated by the lack of support from school or clinics? We would like to hear your stories too.
ERIC offers a range of services to help you cope with the symptoms of wetting and soiling? Want to speak to real person in confidence? Then do give our ERIC helpline a call (+44) 0845 3708008. Or would you rather chat to other young people just like you? Then come and join our active Teen Hub and Message Board scene http://www.eric.org.uk/Hub.
ERIC’s aim is to help reduce the worry and frustrations of bed wetting and soiling for sufferers and their families. Our online shop stocks and sells a complete range of products aimed at helping you or your child enjoy nights away and sleepovers such as sleeping bag liners, vibrating watches and waterproof sheets and duvets http://www.eric.org.uk/Shop/category/190 . – as a bonus every sale helps raise vital funds for ERIC …to ensure we can continue to support families just like yours.
My son is 12 and still wets the bed!
Today’s story is kindly shared with us from a mum who lives in Cornwall.
My son is 12 – well almost twelve. 12 in a month and he still wets the bed!
He was almost 9 years old before I thought I should actually see a health professional about this problem. I don’t know why it took me so long to make that decision?
Perhaps I thought it was normal or maybe I was so busy getting on with the day-to-day occurrences of family life, that within the confines of our home it never felt any different.
He wet the bed – I changed the bed and washed the bedding. The same pattern happened every night, nothing ever changed, so I didn’t think to change my outlook either. I knew it was happening of course, because of all the middle of the night bed changes and mountains of dirty laundry. Some days, I struggled to keep up with the sheer volume of pyjama bottoms getting wet and dry again for use later that night.
Of course, over the years I tried what I had thought was appropriate measures to reduce the risk of bedwetting. I cut back on his drinks in the evening, I woke him up in the night to take him to the toilet and on occasions I did yell and ridicule him for being lazy!!
But the strange thing is I never actually questioned why it was happening. I never ‘Googled’ it and I certainly never asked friends for advice. However, the most shocking thing is I never took him to the doctors – that is until he hit 9 years old.
At 9 he started going on Scout camps and it was becoming a problem hiding the truth from his friends there. So I thought enough is enough, I need to see what is happening and why because no-matter what I try he is still wetting the bed.
The doctor was understanding and asked why I had taken so long to seek help! He placed my sons name on a waiting list to see an ERIC trained nurse at our local clinic. At almost the same time I purchased a Malem Bedwetting Alarm from the ERIC website.
It took nearly a year for my son to be offered an appointment at the clinic and in that time the alarm went off every night. Every night it woke me up in the next bedroom but it never managed to wake up my son!! During the waiting period his bedwetting did improve slightly with the odd dry or damp night, but certainly not enough to remove his name from the waiting list.
When we eventually saw the nurse, she clearly explained the reasons why some children still continue to wet the bed when most have grown out of it. We learned that for every class of 30 children aged 7 there will be two in that class who wet at night. Most importantly she explained that my ‘tried and failed’ methods were because they were not promoting the use of my sons bladder in the correct way – reducing drinks, waking him in the night etc was the opposite of what I should be doing.
We walked away with charts, stickers, plenty of leaflets and follow up appointments. But most of all, we walked away with reassurance that he was not alone. As it later turned out, there are indeed other children in his year at primary school that still wet the bed. The reason I know this? Because I began to open up to other parents; the more I talked to them, the more parents I found that either have children who wet the bed, or they did themselves when they were a child.
My son is 12 soon. We first went to see the doctor when he was 9, we saw the nurse when he was 10 and yes now and again, but not very often now, he wets the bed. But I don’t mind because I now understand why and that he isn’t the only one.
We are really pleased to hear that things are getting easier to deal with at home and that you had the courage to share your story with us. We know lots of parents are having similar experiences to you and our helpful leaflets are available here http://www.eric.org.uk/Bedwetting/leaflets_bedwetting
How do you cope with mountains of laundry or sleepovers? If you have a story to share we would love to hear from you too!!
CCTV in Toilets! Privacy issue or peace of mind?
It was recently announced that more than 200 schools are using CCTV cameras in toilets or changing rooms and this news will no doubt come as a shock to many parents.
The research indicated that The Radclyffe School in Oldham topped the list of schools with 20 cameras in toilets or changing rooms. Its head teacher, Hardial Hayer, said its cameras are above doors entering toilets, and only overlook washbasins. He said the cameras had been placed so it was possible to tell who was going in, but added they are not near cubicles.
Understandably, this research does raise serious questions about the importance of privacy of school children across Britain and indeed clarity about purpose of use, data protection and excessive surveillance does need to addressed. But is CCTV in toilets and changing rooms an infringement of privacy or does it provide peace of mind for parents and children that their school’s toilets are safe and monitored?
Susan Lewis, Chief Inspector for Wales recently commented; “You can tell a school by its toilets: they say an awful lot about a school and tell you about the value the school places on its environment.”
Indeed, schools need to ensure children can use school toilets when they need to which is why it is important for them to consider the total toilet environment. Simply keeping facilities clean and in good condition is not enough. All aspects of privacy and toilet-use should be considered to ensure a healthy and pleasant environment is provided for pupils and this should go beyond ensuring access to adequate provisions like toilet paper, soap and hand towels – unfortunately we know that not all schools even do this.
We know that a quarter of pupils avoid their school toilets – some even avoid drinking throughout the day to prevent them from using the school toilets at all. Added to this is the problem of many toilet blocks being located in isolated areas of the school grounds leaving children feeling vulnerable and many are unsupervised which increases instances of bullying or vandalism.
I think perhaps then CCTV cameras are best used when other options to keep toilets safe and free from vandalism have failed. Their aim is to make toilets a safer environment for pupils and to prevent anti-social behaviour such as smoking, vandalism and graffiti. They can allow schools to keep toilets open at times when they would previously have been locked and that is good news for school children.
Certainly, the use of CCTV cameras in school toilets remains a contentious issue and will undoubtedly continue to be widely debated amongst teaching staff, parents and pupils in the future. What is your opinion?
To read further about raising the standards of school toilets visit www.bog-standard.org
Tracy
Good teacher
I love getting positive comments on the Bog Standard you tell us pages but sadly they are few and far between. Most are stories of pupils having accidents in class because they weren’t allowed to go to the toilet or horror stories of pupils faced with loos without cubicle doors or locks, no cleaning, no soap, no toilet roll, no warm water… Anyway, I’m getting off subject – this is a positive post!
Today I received a comment from a very sensible teacher – I just wish more were like him. He posted on the access to toilets section and said;
“Allowing children to use school toilets is an education for both teacher and pupil alike.
Teachers must understand the needs of their learners. The route to effective classroom and behaviour management does not lie in the inflexible, unbending refusal to let students use the bathroom. A bad teacher can make students have accidents; a good teacher will not require displays of power to maintain a safe and effective learning environment.
On the other hand, particularly in secondary school, students must learn to budget free time and remain aware of the effects of leaving a lesson. If pupils are engaged and hooked on what they are doing, often they will forget about the toilet. We are all human; mistakes can be made. Pupils forget about going to the toilet at break time as teachers forget to mark books or return projects.
Any system must be flexible yet clear in its consequences. The student who requests repeat toilet visits compared with the student who apologises and asks to leave before the others arrive are quite different, and require different responses. A flexible system will also allow those with anxiety/medical problems to visit the toilet discreetly and not stick out as the ‘only one who gets to go’.”
I’ve said before that teachers allowing access to toilets during lessons is something that causes a lot of intense debate. But the approach above seems very sensible and fair to me. I’ve never really understood it when people argue that if you allow access it’s going to be toilet anarchy and all the pupils will be getting up and going every 5 minutes. Surely any good teacher can control a class and identify the genuine requests without fuss and disruption. And if a clear and fair system has always been in place, it’s not going to be something pupils will take advantage of – we need to give trust and respect in order to get it back.
Let me know what you think…
Natasha
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