When Your Child Starts Wetting Again

Where to start

• If your child was dry for more than six months and has started wetting again, see the GP.
• If there’s thirst, tiredness, weight loss or pain when peeing, ask for an urgent appointment that day.
• Tell the GP about any worry or change at home or at school.
• The medical reasons include a urine infection, constipation and diabetes. Act quickly if it hurts or burns when your child pees, or they have a high temperature or blood in their pee, which can be signs of a urine infection, or if the wetting has come on over a few days or weeks and your child is also very thirsty, peeing more than usual, very tired, or losing weight or looking thinner, which can be signs of type 1 diabetes. Either way, ask the surgery for an urgent appointment that day, and if it is closed, get urgent medical advice. In England, Scotland and Wales, call 111. In Northern Ireland, contact your GP surgery during surgery hours, or your regional GP out-of-hours service when the surgery is closed. For a life-threatening emergency, call 999.
• If your child is drowsy or confused, or has the signs of diabetes and is getting worse quickly, has tummy pain or diarrhoea, is being sick, or is breathing faster and more deeply than usual, get emergency help. Call 999. Or go to your nearest A&E. Help is free and available at any hour.
• Tell the GP what has changed at home or at school; where a child’s feelings are part of it, doctors are asked to consider bringing in someone with psychological expertise.
• Doctors are also asked to consider whether a child is being harmed when wetting comes back and continues despite proper assessment and treatment, with no medical reason and no other clear explanation. If you think someone may be hurting your child, act that day, using the routes under “If you need help right now”, at the foot of this page; if that person may live with your child, in either home, go straight to children’s social care or the police. A national child protection helpline will talk it through with you. NSPCC, 0808 800 5000. Email help@nspcc.org.uk. Mon-Fri 10am-4pm by phone; email 11am-4pm, seven days a week. An email sent when the service is closed is not received. If the NSPCC service is closed and the concern cannot wait, call the police on 101. You can also contact the child’s local out-of-hours children’s social care, social work or social services team. If a child is in immediate danger, call 999. Help is free.

The rest of the tip, and why it works, is in the library.

Sources

NICE, Bedwetting in under 19s (CG111, 2010, reviewed 2018), recommendations 1.3.1, 1.3.2, 1.3.8, 1.3.9, 1.3.11, 1.3.13, 1.3.15 and 1.3.18; NHS, Type 1 diabetes: symptoms (reviewed October 2024); NHS, Bedwetting in children (reviewed April 2023)

It goes with

• The Hour Before Bed. For parents whose child’s bedtime has turned into an hour of worries, questions and meltdowns.
• Trauma in Childhood. For parents whose child has been through something hard, or whose family has.

The first chapter you open here is free to read in full.

Free on this subject

• Sleep. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.
• Child development. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.