A bed wetting alarm is a very effective device to use when helping children overcome nocturnal enuresis. Bedwetting is very embarrassing to children and if not handled sensitively, it can have psychological effects, such as making them feel ashamed of fearful. Alarms for bed wetting help to treat the problem rather than just mask the symptoms to make it appear as if the bed-wetting problem has been resolved. A bed wetting alarm is a device to be used along with another method of treatment. Parents should be aware that this device on its own will not cure bed wetting.
A bedwetting alarm is a moisture detection system, which is worn with underpants designed for moisture. These can be the pull-ups as advertised on TV for children of all ages or regular underpants. If you use regular underpants with the bed wetting alarm, you should have liners on the mattress because it does take some time before these alarms start to work. You should not expect a miracle to occur the very first night your child wears the bedwetting alarm. There are many different kinds of bedwetting alarms so it's important to choose the one that is right for your child.
There are signs that will tell you if a bed wetting alarm will be good for you. First and foremost is the price. This must fit within your budget and of course it must be comfortable for the child. Most of the bedwetting alarms have some method of attaching them to the nightclothes, preferably the underpants. You should carefully inspect it to make sure that there are no sharp edges which will dig into the child and prevent him/her from getting a good night's sleep. If the bedwetting alarm is not comfortable, it will not be effective.
Bedwetting alarms use batteries as power, so there won't be any wires in which your child can become entangled. You do need to make sure that the replacement batteries are a reasonable price and keep a stock of them on hand. Once the sensor on the bed wetting alarm does detect moisture it will emit a sound to wake the child. You do have to experiment with the sound to make sure that it will wake the child without waking up anyone else in the house, if that is what you want. Once the alarm goes off and the child gets up to the bathroom, a bedwetting alarm needs to be reset. Therefore you will probably have to teach the child to reset this or tell him/her to wake you so that you can do it for him/her.
Another factor you have to take into consideration when using a bed wetting alarm is the level of moisture that you want it to detect. If you set it too low, even sweating during the night might set the alarm off and if you set it too high, then the child might have actually wet the bed before it goes off. You need a bedwetting alarm that will not slip out of place as your child tosses and turns during the night. Bedwetting alarms also have to be durable so that if the child drops them, they do not break easily. A bed wetting alarm must be loud enough to wake the child or it will not be effective.
I used to hide the shame that I carried around in the privacy of my own head, as I was still wetting the bed up until the age of 12 years old. However, today it's not an issue for me as I've come to believe that it was not my fault, and let's face it, what kid would want to wake up in a wet bed if he didn't have to. Bed wetting is not an uncommon problem with children and although most grow out of it at an early age, there are some, who don't.
Anyhow, my predicament was way back in the 1960's but there is a lot more help and understanding about the problem these days both with medical support and gadgets to help overcome the problem. One such gadget is a Bed wetting alarm. A bed wetting alarm is a very effective device to use with helping young children overcome nocturnal enuresis.
But although bed wetting alarms can be useful devices, they should not really be considered a first line option, especially with older kids. For me, I now know that the years of trauma and embarrassment bed wetting had caused both me and my parents, made the situation worse, not better, and as my problem had become centered in the mind, not the body, no fancy techniques or alarms would have helped me overcome this at that time.
But for youngsters, that have not been scorned or told they must stop, and are not getting laughed at or teased by their siblings, then a bed wetting alarm could be just what the doctor ordered.
There's a plethora of bed wetting alarms on the market these days but only a couple of types really worth considering. How they work is by detecting moisture. The moment a few drops of moisture are sensed, an alarm sounds to wake the child so that he/she will hopefully wake up and go to the bathroom as opposed to wetting the bed. But as I said earlier, if the child is older, then the problems are deeper and these alarms might offer some temporary relief but they are by no means a long term cure.
For kids of a younger age, the bed wetting alarm may be useful in helping to get them into the conscious habit of waking up when they first start to pee. A bit like house training for a child if you like, and with a bit of luck they can wean off the alarm over time.
For the older kids, there are many reasons why they may be having problems with bed wetting such as undue stress and depression caused by such things as bullying at school or an unhappy home life. In these cases, childhood psychiatry would be more helpful than high street gadgets. Of course, the main problem here is that not so may kids open up and quite often say everything is fine, when if fact it's not, so a gentle and professional approach may be needed to help out here.
Bed wetting into adolescence is no fun and can have a major impact on the child's wellbeing, so parents should really treat this as a condition that needs addressing professionally and not a problem that the kid needs to get a grip of.
Every single day children are waking up in wet beds and the problem is more widespread than you may think. It's just not talked about too much, that's all. The bed wetting alarm can be very useful in some cases, but parents really need to have the child checked out by the family doctor before they choose any alternative solutions, including bed wetting alarms.
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