Incorrect sleep patterns and bedwetting

I don't claim to understand all the aspects of how sleep affects enuresis, but here's what I do know. People who wet the bed don't follow normal sleep patterns. Once they fall asleep, they plummet into stage four sleep where they remain for longer than they should. The amount of REM sleep they receive is not even close to what is necessary for normal functioning in day to day activities. For this reason, these children seem lethargic or "spacey" and have a difficult time maintaining their focus. Often they are diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorder. Is it any wonder? How easily do you stay focused when you are sleep deprived? I feel certain that this one issue was the most frustrating for our family personally. We knew that our son was bright. But sometimes even the most simple school problems just stumped him. He would give us this far away look, as though he were thinking about nothing at all. I could never figure out the reason for this behavior, and I honestly thought that maybe we were doing him a disservice by not putting him on some kind of medication. Most days I wanted to pull my hair out (we homeschool, so I am the one who has to try to teach him through all that brainfog!).

Enter the enuresis professionals, with their $2,000 fee. They have taught us several lessons with regard to how to change our son's sleep patterns. First of all, we were told to put a plywood board under his mattress to make it more firm. Next, we were instructed to put a flattened out cardboard box on top of the mattress, under the sheet. All of this, we learned, is to keep him from sleeping so deeply.

More instructions, as we received them, on how to change those faulty sleep patterns will follow! Keep up, cause I'm gonna reveal the problems with another widely used method for keeping the child from wetting the bed in my next post!!