Enuresis is the term that doctors use when they are talking about bedwetting. Bedwetting that occurs during the night is called nocturnal and this conditions affects people of all ages. It is quite common for young children to wet the bed during the night but it becomes a source of alarm for parents who have teenagers with enuresis. In addition, the teenagers themselves are embarrassed and don’t want anyone to know about it. Adults too are embarrassed by bedwetting and try all sorts of treatments to help reduce the occurrences.
Once a medical condition as the cause of nocturnal enuresis has been ruled out, then it is time to start trying various methods of treatment for enuresis. One of these is the enuresis alarm, which will wake up the person wearing it at the first sign of moisture. There are various kinds of these alarms and at varying prices. They also differ in the sound of the alarm they emit to wake a child or an adult out of a deep sleep. For children, there are alarms to help reduce the number of nocturnal bedwetting occurrences with funny sounds and blinking lights, which really makes them attractive.
Using an enuresis alarm is a form of behavior modification. In most cases of children and teenagers who wet the bed, they have not learned how to sense the body’s signals that the bladder is full. The nocturnal behavior needs to be modified so that they will learn to wake up on their own. Once a child or an adult wears the alarm for a period of time, he/she will get used to waking up at a certain time to go to the bathroom. This is one way of reducing the episodes of nocturnal enuresis. It has been proven that these alarms do work to reduce enuresis within a few weeks.
When you are buying an enuresis alarm, there are some factors that you need to keep in mind. It must be comfortable for the child to wear. If it isn’t, it probably won’t have any effect on the nocturnal enuresis because nine times out of ten the child takes it off when he/she goes to bed. It also has to be set to the right moisture sensitivity so that a child with enuresis will have enough time to make it to the bathroom once the alarm wakes him/her. At the same time, you don’t want to have the alarm too sensitive because perspiration may set it off.
An enuresis alarm must be easy for the child to reset when he/she goes back to bed without having to wake you up to reset it. If not the child could wet the bed after that and still feel guilty about the enuresis. There are alarms of this nature that the parent can reset by means of remote control from the bedroom, but this also means you have to wake up when the child goes to the bathroom. Chances are, though, that if you have a child with enuresis and he/she wakes up to go to the bathroom, it will be a cause for celebration and everyone in the house will be up.