I would contact his mom to get the real story. As the years go by people's memory gets very faded and who knows what the real truth is. 12 yo is too old to be bedwetting so if neither parent is going to step up I would make arrangements to take him to the dr. If he did have a medical condition it would color my opinion about how I handled it. I would explain to him that, in the future, after 5'o he can't have anything to drink because of his problem. If 5'0 didn't work then I would back it up another hour before bedtime until the problem was resolved.

I would however DEMAND that daddy does the laundry. This has happened a few times here. 12 isn't that old for it either.

One thing that might help is trying to get SS to drink a bit less before he goes to bed.

He will grow out of it, but for your peace of mind, dad should do laundry. Chances are highly likely that dad was a bed wetter too. Ask him about it. Make it his problem, not yours.

My dr. said ss would grow out of bedwetting, but only with a little help. His advice was decrease sugar not just drinks starting about 7pm. Also remind him to go to the restroom around 8, 9pm, etc. till his bad time and once before hitting the sack plus my dr. advised us to not wash his linens have him do it. to reinforce the your rules so he will obey b/c he don't want to wash the laudary so maybe he won''t fight decreased sugar and drinks. good luck my ss has finally only has accidents about once every 3-4 months.

However, I do not make him feel bad for it in any way. My son has a bladder issue and sleeps very soundly. Therefore, I just deal with it, he is 9 soon to be 10. My pediatrician gave him some meds to help him, which it does. She also said he would grow out of it. She also said that we should stop drinks before bed, but that because his bladder is not large enough, it wouldn't matter if he didnt drink anything for 2 days before he went to bed, he would still pee. He should be checked for a bladder problem. He should also to be taken to a counselor to see if he ever was molested. My son was not, but my pediatrician says that is the #1 cause for boys wetting the bed past 5 or 6. Just don't make him feel bad, remember he can't help it.... Good Luck.

fiancee does that laundry, I won't touch it...blech...now we make him wear pullups to bed...

I read another post you made about thinking your SS had been molested. Yes, bedwetting is fairly common, but I'll speak from experience in our family. Ny sister wet the bed until she was quite old - preteen age. I just found out about three years ago that she had been molested by various members of my family over a period of time. I think that would explain why she was wetting the bed in her case. Her nervous system was messed up due to the abuse. I found a letter she had written one of her friends in an attempt to get some of this off her chest. It was pretty graphic and to the point. I found it on an old computer disk in my desk. I confronted her about it and it's all true.

I hope that's not the case with your SS.

I'm not saying this is the case with your SS, but it certainly was in our case.

My niece had the same problem. Her issue was that she slept so soundly she didn't wake up when she needed to pee. So she would pee wherever she was. If she was riding in the car and fell asleep and needed to pee, she would pee where she was sitting.

Is your SS embarassed by this? Does he want to do something to correct it? If so, then I would recommend fluid restriction (although this has to happen early because it takes the body several hours to process liquids). Plus, he is old enough to wake himself up in the night to pee. Can he set his alarm and get up around 2 am or so? This might interrupt his sleep for a while, but it might also help solve the problem. Just a suggestion.

SD8 also suffers from the same thing. She was on medication that helped for a while but then our insurance changed and the medicine now costs 4 times what it did and BM refused to pay for it (all medicines are her responsibility, and we could never afford that much every month). So we talked to the doctor and he said mostly the same stuff as above, but also mentioned that a messed up sleep cycle could affect bedwetting also. This makes sense for us, because SD8 has no bed time at BM's house, gets to go to bed and wake up whenever she wants. He recommended getting her on a regular sleep cycle, including weekends. We told BM, but she won't listen. So what can we do?

Though it is interesting how prevalent this seems to be in our situation don't you think?

SD stopped wetting around 13, but has relapses. She has been wetting all this week- even before she was in trouble (see posts.) Not sure what it's from. I know that it's "normal" but like I said above seems prevalent in this situation.

Peace, love, and red wine