any advice about night times please?

[jobnockey]

My DS is 4.5 and has been reliably toilet trained during the day for well over a year now. However, he still has a nappy at night time. It's not really a problem as such but he is becoming quite self concious about it - his cousins had a sleepover the other night and noticed and, well, you know what kids are like...

He seems to always need a wee during the night whether he has a drink before bed or not. if i go into his room with the potty before i go to bed i can get him to have a sleep-wee into it and then he's usually dry in morning but otherwise he'll just wee in his sleep. He just doesn't wake up for it by himself at all.

should I wake him up a bit more when he does a late wee do you think? maybe this would 'train' him to wake up? or should we just wait it out and he'll get there in the end? i know he doesn't really want to wear a nappy but i can't be bothered to deal with extra loads of washing to be honest and whenever i have thought let's just take the plunge that's inevitably what i end up doing.

Any tips or similar experiences? Is 4.5 quite old for this?

thanks

Not too old, you can't force it, relax, do whatever makes your life easiest. Nothing I did made any difference to when they were ready. DS2 was the latest, bit over 7 before he cracked it.

They can't go through the night until they start to make a particular hormone that suppresses urine production at night. They usually begin to make the hormone between the ages of 2 and 8, so becoming dry at night at any time in that age range is normal.

There is no training involved in being dry at night

ah thanks. i had a feeling this would be the case i just feel a bit bad for him as he is quite aware of it now. he didn't want to put his nappy on tonight 'because hes not a baby' but i told him it had a number 6 on it because it was really for 6 years olds... he fell for it for now!

My DD is the same age and still in a nappy at night time. I've tried and tried but she always wees in her sleep regardless drinking etc.

She asked not to wear a nappy tonight so im trying again but I can see me changing sheets at 3am.

I'm with GobblersKnob and hate to hear of kids deprived of a drink before bed, when it just comes down to hormones. Wait til you have dry nappies for a good few weeks and then give it a try.

DS1 aged 4.3 is the same. He has never yet had a dry nappy in the morning. We have periodically tried without a nappy and 'lifted' him to wee when asleep but he has still been soaked (and not woken up) in the morning. It is all to do with producing enough of the hormone ADH to stop them making as much urine.

I think we will just keep waiting til he becomes drier before trying again. I've just explained it to him factually and he seems to be ok with that at the moment.