I’ve cleaned house all day today thinking about Julia’s post on so much pee. It’s a fairly unique planet that we live on where this type behavior exists, but it’s common across the board when one adopts traumatized children. I’m sure it’s a problem in foster care also as each foster mom I’d met in the adoption of all my children would share her experiences with this issue.

Not all of my children are or were bedwetters but enough of them have been challenged in this area that it’s been quite a problem here at our house.

Night terrors generally drive this behavior in our family. Children so petrified by all that has happened to them that they now still hate to get up in the night and go to the bathroom. I had one daughter sleep with her glasses on since she’d once been so afraid of unwanted nighttime visitors back in Texas.

I’ve had other children be deliberate bedwetters using urine as a control issue, demonstrating their ridiculous power in keeping our family hostage to the odor of urine.

I watched a lot of children eventually grow past this behavior. Usually by the early to mid teens they’ve overcome this objectionable behavior. It has a terribly unpleasant aspect to it when a child is so much larger. Like Julia we’ve had urine on the floor, in wadded up clothes, down a heat vent, under a bed, next to the toilet, and on other people’s belongings.

No one ever admits to it, I’ve woken kids up in the morning and listened in abject disbelief as they deny making that puddle in their bed – even though their clothes are soaked also.

We’ve worn out washing machines as often as normal folks change their towel sets. I generally prefer to hang the nasty clothes and sheets outside believing, like only a child from the 1950s would believe, that the sun will bleach out the deep odor. Honestly it helps my own mindset.

I only have a couple of children still wearing night diapers. I want to use my own bedwetting family experience to encourage others, to help them understand that this behavior does not continue forever.

Photo Credit Cindy Bodie