4 year old still in pull ups at night?

[Mumanddone]

were on night 3 of trying to get out 4 year old out of pull ups. We just went for it - she always had a pretty soaked nappy on waking. It’s been messing with my sleep and causing loads of arguments in all honesty. Pull ups work but my husband thinks we should be training her at night. For context, DD is 5 end of November and has been potty trained in the day since 2.5 with no issues. Will it happen without intervention?

That’s daytime training not night time training though. The absorbency of disposables is an issue in toddlers who need to make the connection between feeling the need to go and what happens if they ignore that when they are awake. E.g. I feel this sensation if I do nothing about it I will be uncomfortable. It’s a conscious process.

Night time training in a child with full daytime bladder control is different. Either it’s because they haven’t started producing vasopressin yet which usually happens before 7 years old or because they don’t rouse from sleep when they feel the need to go. At which point being uncomfortable afterwards is a bit late.

I suspect that ‘lifting’ was a lot more common than it is now. So rather than children being trained they were just put on the potty or toilet while asleep.

Yes this is what I did with mine when they were toddlers, set a couple of alarms throughout the night and carried them through to have a wee. Everyone I knew did this, I don’t remember it lasting long before mine just woke up themselves for a wee.
This doesn’t seem like a common way of doing things now though.

I found with my 4 year old that we kept her in pull-ups and it just happened at one point. I think a couple of good habits helped, like getting her used to going for a wee before bed, going for a wee when she woke up, and from quite early on as soon as she woke up switching to knickers so she couldn't do an early morning nappy wee! But we did nothing like restrict fluids or take her for a wee in the middle of the night... I definitely would abandon the "training" and let her relax in pull-ups! DD used to celebrate a dry nappy and if it was a wet one, it wasn't made a fuss of. We kept her in dry pull-ups for about a month as I was scared of accidents, but it's been fine up to this point...!!!!

Because it didn’t make a difference to when they started to wake up for a wee or not need one really. You can either faff about with setting an alarms for yourself or just put a pull up on. Yours might not have taken long but some people will have been doing setting alarms and putting sleeping children on the toilet for years.

I'd imagine it's not as common now because there's a very easy alternative that allows everyone to continue to get some sleep without spending months or even years waking up to put a sleeping child on the toilet in the hope they start waking up for a wee. In the same way people no longer hand wash all their clothes because we have washing machines. It's not lazy it's just more logical.

It's fortunate it worked for you and your children but leaving them in pull ups makes much more sense to me than setting multiple alarms and disturbing everyone's sleep.

I wonder if 'lifting' was more common when women were less likely to be working the next day? Or when they had more children and were therefore likely up in the night with a baby?

Bugger that if I'm up at 6.30am to go to work and my only child is sleeping through!

This isn't meant to be judgy, just a personal choice, but: I did use pull-ups until my child was dry at night, which luckily for me was a few months after he was three. But I didn't like it, because all the disposable plastic just felt like such a waste. We did try reusable pull-ups, but at first he was doing such ginormous wees at night that we couldn't find one that didn't leak. So with DS2, I'm not sure what I'll do if he takes longer to be dry at night. The most common approach on this thread seems to be just keep up with the pull-ups and wait, but if it goes on a long time for DS2 I think I'm most likely to try and diagnose whether it's hormonal or not, and base my approach on that. If I can avoid buying and throwing away loads of pull-ups, then I will.

I think that makes a lot of sense! Re it being hormonal- it’s more likely the younger a child is and also it’ll be bigger dilute wees earlier in the night. So if DC is under 4, they go to bed at 7 and you check them as you go to bed at 10.30 and the pull up is already wet and it’s even wetter come morning - almost certainly hormonal. But if actually they’re dry when you check them as you’re going to bed and it’s just a tiny bit in the morning or it seems warm you can probably train that out of them with tactics like limiting before bed drinks and waking them up 5 minutes earlier and rushing straight to the loo.

This is (sadly) how my siblings and I were treated if we wet the bed.
I have 3 children and the oldest 2 were 6 when they naturally stopped needing a pull up at night, my youngest is almost 6 and was actually dry at night at 4 but a UTI set her back and she’s gone back to pull ups for now.

I remember actually thinking I was doing it on purpose as that's what my parents' reaction implied. They weren't abusive really just angry and disappointed so it seemed like it must be something I could fix if I tried. It was years later that it occurred to me I wasn't doing it on purpose and I could stop feeling guilty about it.

It’s always worth trying for a few nights with an absorbent mat underneath but don’t stress her out.

As others have said, it’s a hormone thing and cannot be trained as such.

Night time pull ups are sold in sizes that go up to Teens and are available in every supermarket, so they’re hardly a niche product.

The reason they are sold is that there is a demand for them.

There is a demand for them because lots of older children still wet the bed.

In previous generations bed wetters were cruelly treated and even punished. They still existed though.

Bottom line- don’t worry about it if it doesn’t stop.