So, you’ve achieved daytime dryness. You still need to make those frequent trips to make sure you prevent accidents, but for the most part it’s going well.

Now what?

Next step, night-time dryness, of course.

Note: I have only achieved this part once so far.

When I am speaking of nighttime dryness, I am basically talking about when a child needs to make sure they don’t pee while sleeping.

This step can often come quite a while after the initial stages of daytime dryness.

Again, there is no set age for this developmental milestone. Some kids can manage to have sufficient night-time bladder control as early as age 4, but for most children it’s later, ranging from 5-7 years of age.

So first off… DO NOT WORRY.

Night-time potty training is much harder than daytime training.

Many parents try to train their kids for this early on, because they are worried that a child who is 7 years old who could potentially wet the bed is just not normal. Rest assured… They are.

My son was 6 years old when he was fully night-time trained. This, it turns out, is the time when he was ready. I tried actively training him when he was younger for about 5 nights. He woke up soaked and I had to change the sheets a few times each night. I gave up. Both my husband and I worked full-time and we couldn’t be functional during the day if we had to deal with a crying child, change of sheets, a partial (sometimes full) shower, and a child who then didn’t want to go to sleep a few times a night.  It did not feel like it was the right way to do this. After I came to terms with my good old #momfail feelings, we decided to wait until he was ready.

Here’s what we did (without any scientific basis of course):

  1. Ditch the undies. -  We opted for daytime pull-ups for the occasional nap he took and then for overnight we switched to nighttime pull-ups like these.

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At first, we were using the same kind of pull-ups for any time he slept but then we found that his daytime pull-ups leaked while he slept. Yes, this is how much he peed overnight. In fact, on the morning I went into labour with my second child, we were only awake at 4:45am because of a wet bed. While I was in labour, my husband was trying to handle a child that had a wet bed, and a woman who felt like a pumpkin was going to blow out of her body. But I digress, that story is for another day.

  1. Ready, steady. We started to notice that the pull-ups after naps were completely dry sometimes, so we were able to try underwear for his naps with success. Likewise, we watched his nighttime pull-ups to see if the amount of urine was less. As it started to decrease, we thought it might be time to give it to a go with the training.

  2. Hold the liquids. We pulled back on the liquids before bed. Don’t give them coffee, that will just make them pee more due to the diuretic effect. That’s a joke, just making sure you are still paying attention. It’s simple, though; if you fill your kid up with milk and a full cup of water before bed, he’s bound to have to urinate urgently. And as a full-grown adult who has birthed babies, I can attest to how hard it can be to hold your pee in that situation. Throw a deep sleeper into the mix and you are just asking for accidents.

  3. Awaken the beast. Still using a night-time pull-up, I would wake up my son before WE went to bed, then once more at night to make sure he used the toilet another time. He was dry each time. I did this for about 1 week. And then did the same thing after switching to underwear overnight. I was on maternity leave at the time, so I didn’t have to worry about being at work the next day. As I have said before, sometimes we just need to schedule in milestones like “training” into our lives whenever we can handle it the best and will find it least disruptive. It worked great! Just in case, though, we placed these on his bed so that if there WERE any accidents, clean up would be easier.

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  1. “Mommy wow. I’m a big kid now.” That commercial on TV from when I was a child is ingrained in my head forever. (Almost as much as the cat chow ad with the dancing cat!) I always wondered, and still kind of do, how and why those kids used the toilets with such ease. Like how did they know how to go to the bathroom at night and not fear the dark hallway and whatever lurks in the mysterious shadows? I was a very imaginative child, so it’s no surprise that my children would be similar. Familiarizing my son with the area outside his room at night was part of the training. We needed to make sure he wasn’t going to be scared, or accidentally bump into the wall or much, much worse, fall down the stairs. A night light in the hallway or washroom can be helpful here. Something like the below item works.

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Luckily for us, as part of our Nest system (see below), we have a motion activated light in our hallway that turns on ever so slightly upon movement.

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He did completely fine with his overnight trips to the washroom.

And that’s how our son was night-time potty trained. Waiting for children to express readiness with night-time dryness is important but there’s no harm implementing your own training techniques. So long as you remember that there’s no pressure, you’re not a failure and your child is unique and will develop at their own pace.

And yes, it’s true, no kid will be in college in diapers… But I would rather not have him in grade 2 with diapers either. That’s just my thing. To each their own.

I was planning on discussing bathroom etiquette in detail, but it’s simple. Just remind your children to flush the toilet and wash their hands.

I hope you enjoyed this potty training series and found some helpful information.

I, for one, am pooped. Pun intended.

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