Expert: Trey McGowan - 11/28/2007

Question
I have a 14 yr old son that was diagnosed with Autism and MOMR years ago. I have not been able to get my son to go to the bathroom during the night. He will go during the day w/o a problem but not at all during the night. When I wake him in the mornings, he is soaked and just lays there as if he doesn't even know that he is wet. I have tried using pull-ups, and also adult diapers and neither of these have worked. We make sure he doesn't drink anything after 6pm, and that does not work. I even get up during the night, and wake him to use the restroom, which he does, but most of the time he will still wet the bed after doing this. It is becoming very frustrating because I am constantly having to wash his bed linens. Please give me some good advice that may help me with this issue.

Answer
Hello there, Monica!

First of all, I don't know what 'MOMR' stands for, nor can I find it in a skim of Google. Therefore, I'm going to approach this question from the 'autism' side of things, assuming that it is part of a developmental disability. If I am incorrect, please feel free to enlighten me!

The main reason I jump in to the autism side of things is that I know for a fact that bed wetting is not an uncommon situation in developmentally disabled children. This can happen for a great number of reasons, both physical and mental.

Here's a few articles that bring up the subject and 'cures' better than I ever could in a few lines:

http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/disorders/bedwetting.shtml
http://ezinearticles.com/?Positively-Addressing-Bedwetting-And-Autism-5-Tips-You...
http://children.webmd.com/tc/bed-wetting-primary-nocturnal-enuresis-topic-overvi...

Please note that a lot of these articles seem to assume the child is between 5-10. This is not because it is the only age children bed-wet at, but because it is the most common one. While it is definitely something that needs to be dealt with, it's not unique, and not something you or your son should feel guilty about. Indeed, there are support groups out there who may well be able to suggest some help with the subject.

Personal opinion is that finding out the reason why he is having this issue is probably the big #1 fix for the problem. Whether you have to bring him to a doctor to check, or whether you can discover it yourself (or himself) once the reason has been found, the issues can be worked with. Until then, try out one of those 'moisture alarm' systems. They are proven to be quite effective in a lot of cases where the causes are 'waking issues'.

Hopefully those articles or the suggestions were able to help some. And again, sorry for how long it took to get this question answered!

Trey