Go potty at night!
Question:
I have two girls age 2&4 and they are both pretty much out of their diapers in the daytime! Now at night they both were cloth diapers and pee in them. I try to wake my older one up at night to have her go potty, but most of the time she gets very angry and doesn’t want to go potty, just sleep! She is also slowly growing out of her diapercover! When can I expect my kids to wake up on their own? Julia
Response:
There seems to be a big variance. My 4.5 yo still needs pullups at night, which I have no problem with, but a friend of mine remarked about it to him "Why are you wearing a nappy?" (her child at same age is usually dry at night). I feel no pressure from that remark, but he does. So now he thinks he’s "too big" for the pullup, but we’ve tried without it and he soaks the bed everytime and doesn’t wake up. I don’t like him sleeping in wet pee so I’m happy to keep using the pullups for as long as it takes. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I have two girls age 2&4 and they are both pretty much out of their diapers in the daytime! Now at night they both were cloth diapers and pee in them. I try to wake my older one up at night to have her go potty, but most of the time she gets very angry and doesn’t want to go potty, just sleep! She is also slowly growing out of her diapercover! When can I expect my kids to wake up on their own? Julia
Response:
If my son is anything to go by, not for a while! He’s 6 & does not wake up during the night. I have had to resort to giving him pull-ups to wear in bed because he would wet the bed & still not wake up. I’d rather him wear pull-ups than sleep in a wet bed all night. Any help on this would be appreciated. **Shell** Risk more than others think is safe, care more than others think is wise, dream more than others think is practical, expect more than others think is possible.
Response:
Just wondering…..do you have your oldest girl go potty before bed? My girl (now 4 1/2) will sometimes wake up crying and almost in a sleep-walking state when she has to potty in the middle of the night. Then I take her to the bathroom…when she gets back to bed, it is if she never got up. Sound asleep! Does she (4yo) pee in her diaper every night? Do you let her have a lot of liquids before she goes to bed? Another option may be to cut out liquids after a certain time and see if it helps. Otherwise, you might ask your Pediatrician for some advice also. Hope this helps, heather firsteps: parents and children and reading, from the crib — to kindergarten — to success in school. Helping you help your child learn to read with free reading lessons! http://www.firsteps.com – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I have two girls age 2&4 and they are both pretty much out of their diapers in the daytime! Now at night they both were cloth diapers and pee in them. I try to wake my older one up at night to have her go potty, but most of the time she gets very angry and doesn’t want to go potty, just sleep! She is also slowly growing out of her diapercover! When can I expect my kids to wake up on their own? Julia
Response:
I have two girls age 2&4 and they are both pretty much out of their diapers in the daytime! Now at night they both were cloth diapers and pee in them. I try to wake my older one up at night to have her go potty, but most of the time she gets very angry and doesn’t want to go potty, just sleep! She is also slowly growing out of her diapercover! When can I expect my kids to wake up on their own? Julia
It could be quite some time yet, as there’s a lot of differences in when they stay dry at night. In most kids, staying dry at night doesn’t happen until at least several months after they’re reliable during the day, and a difference of a year or more is not that unusual. Depends on a lot of things, such as their age, physical maturity, size of bladder, how much and when they drink, and how long they’ve been trained during the day. For your 4 year old, since you said that she’s ‘pretty much out of diapers during the day’, I assume that she’s not totally daytime trained, and/or her daytime training only occurred recently. If this is the case, it may be quite some time yet before she’s reliable at night. A few things to think about: As far as you can tell, when she wets, is she awake or partially awake? How soon after she is put to bed does she wet? Is she wet before she falls asleep? When you get her up at night, is she still dry, or already soaking? There’s always the chance that her wetting may not be entirely accidental, particularly if she’s not totally daytime trained or has trained fairly recently. During the day she may feel more pressure to stay dry, and as soon as the diaper is on, the pressure is off, and she feels it’s OK to wet. If you do still occasionally diaper her during the day, does she stay dry, or does she pretty much consistently wet? If she wets, that may say that she thinks it’s OK and acceptable to wet the diaper. Sometimes they "need" a diaper at night as long as you willingly give them one – take it away, and after a few weeks of wet beds, suddenly they’re staying dry. That’s probably not all that common, but it does happen. A lot of kids don’t appreciate being waken up, and in the case of your daughter, if you’re not only waking her up to use the potty, but also unpinning and/or changing her diaper, that’s a lot more than just going to the potty that she’s having to deal with. For her, she may see going to the potty as too much of a hassle compared with just wetting a diaper. And if, perchance, she does wake up on her own and has to go, I’m sure she could never deal with the pins (my daughter couldn’t), so she doesn’t try. If you do get her to sit, does she actually do anything, and how soon after she’s put back to bed does she wet? When she gets up in the morning, does she ask you to take her diaper off, or seem unconfortable by the wet diaper? Or would she be content to stay in a wet diaper in the morning without protest (or maybe wet it further)? One thing that would be totally counterproductive (although I admit that I did do it, very rarely, with my own daughter, when she was totally drenched in the morning, and there was too much happening at once to deal with giving her a bath first thing) was instead of giving her a bath and dressing her, I’d take the quick way out and just put a dry diaper on her (when she was PT during the day). An hour later, when the commotion died down, she was, invariably, wet. These are questions for you to ask yourself, so you can try to figure out your next step. If it’s a case of maturing a bit further, there’s nothing you can do. If there’s other issues involved, though, once you figure them out you can try dealing with them. As far as diaperwraps, there’s at least one place on the web that sells larger "toddler-sized" diapers and plastic pants. Don’t know where it is, but maybe if someone elkse does, they can post it. What you might try doing, as an experiment, if to tell her that you’re going to try a short experiment to make it easier for her to use the potty – and put her in heavy cloth "soaker" training pants, with plastic pants over them. They are easy to remove, are fairly absorbent (but not as absorbent as a diaper). If, after a few weeeks, things don’t change, go back to the diapers, for their absorbency, for a few more months. Then try it again. Avoid pullups, as she won’t feel the wetness, which may remove some incentive for her to stay dry. My own daughter wasn’t daytime trained until a few eeeks after her 4th birthday (tried too hard and too early, and it backfired). She was still in night diapers for nearly another year – on the 3rd try with "soaker pants", it worked. We always used cloth – from what I read, for most that helps with quick training. Not with her. But, each kid is different.
Response:
I have two girls age 2&4 and they are both pretty much out of their diapers in the daytime! Now at night they both were cloth diapers and pee in them. I try to wake my older one up at night to have her go potty, but most of the time she gets very angry and doesn’t want to go potty, just sleep! She is also slowly growing out of her diapercover! When can I expect my kids to wake up on their own? Julia
My son trained at 2 was in diapers at night until 3 — when we took off the diaper we never had a wet bed — the diaper was a cue to wet — when he didn’t have it, he didn’t pee and got up if he needed to. Your 4 year old is old enough to discuss this with. Does she want to go without at night? You might try it if she does — if it doesn’t work out or frustrates her, you can go back to diapers. k
Response:
We tried that thank you, but it didn’t work! I am not really stressing over it. Just wanted to know other experiences to figure out where we were at! Thanks Julia – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I have two girls age 2&4 and they are both pretty much out of their diapers in the daytime! Now at night they both were cloth diapers and pee in them. I try to wake my older one up at night to have her go potty, but most of the time she gets very angry and doesn’t want to go potty, just sleep! She is also slowly growing out of her diapercover! When can I expect my kids to wake up on their own? Julia My son trained at 2 was in diapers at night until 3 — when we took off the diaper we never had a wet bed — the diaper was a cue to wet — when he didn’t have it, he didn’t pee and got up if he needed to. Your 4 year old is old enough to discuss this with. Does she want to go without at night? You might try it if she does — if it doesn’t work out or frustrates her, you can go back to diapers. k
Response:
A little over two weeks ago my 3.5 y.o. daughter looked up at me and said "No diaper tonight Mom". I asked her if she was sure and she said ‘Yup’. So that was that. We’ve had one accident and that was the night we got home too late and she was already asleep and couldn’t get her to pee before bed. She doesn’t get up in the night to pee, she just seems to have the capacity to hold it for 10-12 hours. She doesn’t do this during the day 4-5 hours is more her normal then. But at night, the longer time span seems okay as long as she pees before she goes to bed. Before she decided ‘no diapers’, we had absolutely no luck getting her to try without them at night even though she’d been day trained for aobut a year. Yes she still peed her diaper at night but the month or so before the revelation, she was dry 5 out of 6 mornings. So wait until the diapers are dry in the mronings with some consistency and then see if you can ask pointedly about just wearing panties to bed. Or maybe, just ‘forget’ to put the diaper on. Good luck. The only real piece of advice I’ve learned about potty training is that unless the kid leads, you’ll get no where fairly fast. Good luck! sasha I have two girls age 2&4 and they are both pretty much out of their diapers in the daytime! Now at night they both were cloth diapers and pee in them. I try to wake my older one up at night to have her go potty, but most of the time she gets very angry and doesn’t want to go potty, just sleep! She is also slowly growing out of her diapercover! When can I expect my kids to wake up on their own? Julia
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Response:
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – A little over two weeks ago my 3.5 y.o. daughter looked up at me and said "No diaper tonight Mom". I asked her if she was sure and she said ‘Yup’. So that was that. We’ve had one accident and that was the night we got home too late and she was already asleep and couldn’t get her to pee before bed. She doesn’t get up in the night to pee, she just seems to have the capacity to hold it for 10-12 hours. She doesn’t do this during the day 4-5 hours is more her normal then. But at night, the longer time span seems okay as long as she pees before she goes to bed. Before she decided ‘no diapers’, we had absolutely no luck getting her to try without them at night even though she’d been day trained for aobut a year. Yes she still peed her diaper at night but the month or so before the revelation, she was dry 5 out of 6 mornings. So wait until the diapers are dry in the mronings with some consistency and then see if you can ask pointedly about just wearing panties to bed. Or maybe, just ‘forget’ to put the diaper on. Good luck. The only real piece of advice I’ve learned about potty training is that unless the kid leads, you’ll get no where fairly fast. Good luck! sasha
for ours the motivation for not wearing a diaper at night was a sleepover with a friend at 3 — he was embarrassed to take a pamper [especially since he had been trained since age 2 and only used the pamper at night] With the agreement of the mother of the friend with whom he was staying, we let him go — and quite literally NEVER in his entire life had a wet bed. [well he is on his own now, so as far as we know, no wet beds] Our daughter also trained at 2 was night trained from the beginning — but we had a few wet beds here and there. When she had one rough patch, we got her up at 11 when we went to bed — with her agreement that this would help the problem — and that got her past it. We only had to do that for about 2 weeks. Night is really different from daytime training — some kids just sleep so deeply they don’t respond to the call — no point in pushing it if they are consistently wet — but worth a trial when they want to try it.
