Urinary Incontinence In Children

It is estimated that 13 million Americans have urinary incontinence. These people have problems holding their urine while trying to get to a toilet. While this is typically a problem associated the elderly, children and even teenagers are known to suffer from an over-active bladder. This can include bed wetting which can disturb a night’s sleep.

Incontinence in children usually disappears as they become older. However, this matters little to the young person who experiences the embarrassment of incontinence. The bladder of a baby fills to a pre-determined point and then empties. As the nervous system develops the child learns how to control the urge to urinate. Until age five there can be failures in the nervous system and incontinence can happen. Most will grow out of it.

Interestingly, after age five nighttime bed wetting becomes more common than daytime incontinence in boys. The experts are not sure why this occurs. Most children who wet their beds at night are perfectly normal kids. It could be slower physical development or their bodies produce too much urine at night. The child may not be able to recognize a full bladder when he is sleeping. There is a heredity link that may explain bed wetting in some children.

Slower physical development in some children likely causes incontinence. A smaller bladder capability, longer sleep periods, and undeveloped nervous system may cause many of the over-active bladder episodes in children. As the bladder develops to full size, and the nervous system matures most child incontinence is out grown.

If a child is subjected to high levels of anxiety before his bladder is fully developed incontinence can be expected. Indeed, incontinence is in itself a cause of anxiety. Some children may go months without wetting the bed, then do it out of the blue. Of course, there can be a physical cause too. For example, nerve damage or a urinary infection can cause an over-active bladder. Even overzealous toilet training can cause anxiety in the child, and therefore cause incontinence.

Sometimes medications might be prescribed to children with severe bed wetting problems. However, medicines only work in about 20 percent of children. There are moisture alarms available that can wake the child when urine becomes present. Then the child will wake up and head for the bathroom and finish urinating. Keep in mind, that in most cases an over-active bladder in children eventually ends as he matures.