When to stop 'lifting' at night.

[littledawley]

My DS is nearly three and a half and has had no nappies at night for about three months. We are in the habit of lifting him onto the loo before we go to bed. Generally he does a wee and is then fine until morning. He has the odd accident - most recently on a night when I didn't lift him.

Today, however, I was told that research has shown that lifting children like this can cause long-term problems - i.e he won't develop the ability to wake up / his bladder won't get used to coping for 12 hours. I'm sceptical of this but don't know how long we should carry on for. Should I just let him have a few accidents?

Please fill me in with your experiences. Thanks!

I wouldn't lift at all. We tried twice with ours and he didn't wake up. Didn't wee and just cried to go back to bed. He seems to have finally got there on his own and we won't be lifting our other two.

Its always seemed such a freaky and unnatural thing to do to disturb a sleeping child I've never done it. One of my mine was fine, dry no problems, the other has occassional bed wetting incidents - not the end of world, just a reminder to me the bed needs changing ! I'd advocate leaving them to work it out for themselves, and encouraging them to use the loo before going to bed.

Thanks for the 'freaky and unnatural' comment. Nice.

Personally I've never lifted mine. Why not just leave them in nappies? My 2 boys were 2.10 and 3.10 when they gave up night time nappies. They only ever had a couple of accidents each. Dd1 still hanging on to hers even though it's dry every night (no worries as it's cloth so doesn't cost a thing).
You have no way of knowing if he'll be dry if there's no nappy evidence, so think you'll just have to risk it - the worst thing that can happen is a wet sheet!

I think Minum probably meant that it foes against all your instincts to wake up a sleeping small child in the middle of the night - I'd rather just put the nappy on than do that.