When your child experiences bedwetting, it is a symptom of something else rather than its own disease. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, it is a common occurrence among children, as about 15% of children wet the bed after age three.
If your child is regularly wetting the bed after age three, however, it could be a sign of an underlying condition involving the kidneys or the bladder. While herbal remedies work, make sure you talk to your doctor to ensure the herbs are safe to use with your child, and that your child is not currently taking any medications that could interact with the herbal medicine.
Drinking Cold Cranberry Juice
Cranberry is known to promote bladder and urinary tract health. Drinking a cold glass an hour before bed can help keep the child’s system healthy, and stop the problem. Drinking the liquid right before bed can contribute to the problem, so make sure you time things carefully. Since cranberry juice itself is tart, consider watering it down, or mixing it lightly with another juice to make it more palatable for your child.
Herbal Remedies
There are several herbal remedies available for those with bedwetting problems:
- Mustard Powder: Use a half-teaspoon of dry mustard seed powder and add it to a cup of warm milk. Allow the child to drink this an hour before going to bed. Mustard seeds have been helpful to people who suffer from urinary disease.
- Jaggery: Jaggery will need to be given in small amounts because it will warm the body. When the body is warm, bedwetting is much less likely to occur. Give your child a small piece every morning with a glass of warm milk. An hour later, give your child roasted celery seeds, and roasted sesame seeds, in equal amounts, with some rock salt. Do this every day for two months.
- Indian Gooseberry: Before going to bed, mix a teaspoon of Indian Gooseberry pulp with a pinch of black pepper, and give it to the child.
- Cinnamon: Have your child chew on a piece of cinnamon bark throughout the day. If he or she doesn’t like it, try using a mixture of cinnamon sugar on buttered toast in the morning for breakfast.
- Herbal Tea: Mixing horsetail, bearberry, and oak bark in small amounts with boiling water and allowing it to steep for a few hours will create an herbal tea intended to help relieve bedwetting. Have the child drink a half a cup of the tea twice during the day, and one cup an hour before bed. When used regularly, it will prevent bedwetting.
Foods That Can Help
Walnuts and Raisins
Feeding your child a tasty and nutritious snack consisting of two teaspoons of walnuts and one teaspoon of raisins before going to bed can help treat, and even cure the condition. Repeat this every night until you start seeing positive results.
Bananas
Bananas act as a binder in the stomach to reduce bedwetting potential. Have you child eat one to two bananas during the day and you should see a reduction or an elimination of bedwetting.
Honey
Having your child eat a teaspoon of honey before going to bed can greatly reduce the problem. If he or she doesn’t like it raw, you can mix it in with milk during breakfast.
Apple Cider Vinegar
Mix two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar with a glass of water and have your child drink it with every meal. It will help to reduce acid levels in the stomach, which will also help reduce the frequent urge to urinate.
Bedwetting Exercises
Consider training the child gradually throughout the day to delay the process of urinating. Start with asking them to wait a few minutes after they feel the urge to go, and then as they successfully do this, work the time up to a few hours. This will help them learn bladder control and enable the child to have more control during the nighttime hours. This will strengthen the muscles in the bladder, and help it increase in size so that it is able to hold enough urine at night.
If you use these treatments and still have an issue with bedwetting, it is time to see a doctor to make sure there are no other issues at play causing the problem. As a general rule, you should never give liquid to a child who wets the bed within an hour of bedtime. Make sure all liquid intake stops at least an hour before he or she is to be in bed asleep for the night.
Most importantly, do not punish a child for his or her bedwetting problems. This is a natural process that most of the time happens without the knowledge of the child, and will go away when the child gets older.
Teach your child where to find clean underwear and bedsheets, so when an accident happens, they can help themselves. It stops them from disrupting the parents, and the child will have more incentive to work to change the habit on their own. Punishing the child will cause even more embarrassment and stress, which can end up making the problem worse in the long run.