The complete bedwetting dictionary: O
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☀️ Overprotective Parents
In thirty years of treating bedwetting, I have noticed a recurring pattern. Well-meaning parents, in their desire to protect their child from embarrassment or discomfort, unintentionally prolong the bedwetting itself.
The most common form of overprotection is to keep an older child in pull-ups long past the point where they would benefit. Another is to wake the child during the night and walk them to the bathroom, a habit that interrupts the very learning the brain needs to do. A third is to avoid every situation in which an accident might happen: no sleepovers, no school trips, no friends staying over. Each of these protections, on its own, is rational. But cumulatively, they send the child a message: "we don't believe you can handle this."
The most helpful thing a parent can do is to treat bedwetting matter-of-factly, without shame, without rescuing, without pretending it isn't happening, and then to seek treatment. Children become capable when they are allowed to discover that they are capable.