Do you find yourself changing your child’s sheets too often because of tiny “accidents” that happen at night?  While there is little scientific evidence to show that one causes the other, doctors and experts observe that ADHD and bedwetting (or enuresis) often occurs together.  Will bedwetting go away if the ADHD symptoms are treated? Or will it require its own interventions?

Every one of us has wet the bed at least once in our lives.  When a baby’s bladder gets filled, the muscles contract automatically and the baby urinates.  As the baby grows up and his nervous system matures, the circuits that connect the brain and the bladder helps a child realize when the bladder is full.  The child is now capable to delay urination until he reaches a proper place to void the bladder.  Often, children learn to control their bladder during the day before they can sleep through a dry night – it’s normal for night-time accidents to occur every now and then.  But when a child is still unable to control the bladder after the age of 5, he or she meets the diagnostic criteria for enuresis. There are four kinds of enuresis, but for now we are interested in nocturnal enuresis, or nighttime bedwetting.

The causes of nocturnal enuresis are not known, but it could be a combination of various factors – delayed neurological development, an over-production of urine at night, or small bladder capacity.  Sometimes, enuresis is caused by emotional trauma or anxiety.  Research shows that having ADHD is also a risk factor for enuresis.  A study in the Southern Medical Journal looks at a large group of 6-year-old children with ADHD to another group of 6-year-olds without the disorder. They found that the kids with ADHD are 4.5 times more likely to experience daytime enuresis and 2.7 times more likely to experience nocturnal enuresis.  Similar papers have observed higher rates of enuresis in children with ADHD.

Although enuresis tends to decline after age 5, some children may require separate interventions for the condition. Treating enuresis will involve evaluating the child’s current physical and emotional state.  From there, one of the following interventions will be done:

Behavior modification

Limit your child’s liquid intake at least two hours before bed time and remind your child to urinate before going to bed. Praise your child for sleeping through a night without bedwetting, but do not punish your child if an accident occurs.  When your child wets the bed, make him or her responsible for changing the sheets.

Hypnotherapy

Some therapists have had success using hypnotherapist to help children learn to control their bladder or cooperate with behavior modification techniques.

Neurofeedback

A therapy called neurofeedback can correct any deficits in the brain’s wave patterns, which will help your child control his or her bladder. This is useful not only for treating enuresis, but for ADHD symptoms as well.

Diet

Research shows that food allergies or the chemicals in food can cause ADHD symptoms, including bedwetting. Going on the Feingold Diet (or any ADHD diet that will eliminate the allergenic food) reduces incidences of bedwetting and ADHD symptoms.

Chiropractic care

Some cases of enuresis are caused by misalignments in the tailbone or sacrum. The tailbone starts out as five separate segments until the child reaches puberty, at which the fusion of the tailbone segments begins. It’s possible that a misalignment of the tailbone segments can irritate the nerves connected to the bladder, thereby sending mixed signals and causing uncontrolled urination.  Chiropractic care has been able to treat the spinal causes of bedwetting.  In fact, in the last decades, I have taken care of dozens of children with enuresis alone and children who had a combination of ADHD and enuresis.

My experience has shown that children who are suffering from both ADHD and enuresis respond better to our holistic approach than children with enuresis only. From my perspective, enuresis combined with ADHD are merely symptoms of underlying imbalances in the brain function- we call it a functional disconnection syndrome – that can be treated naturally with an approach such as the Unritalin Solution.