Children with Incontinence
The Continence Foundation of Australia says that three to five percent of children between five to 17 have a daytime wetting problem. Daytime bedwetting is more common in girls, and night-time bedwetting is more common in boys.
While these can improve with age, children don’t always grow out of it.
There can be multiple reasons why your child has this condition. It could be because your child’s bladder, urinary tracts or urethras haven’t developed properly. Your child’s bladder might be overactive, which means the bladder doesn’t store urine the way they are supposed to. Or your child might have an underactive bladder, so when they do go to the toilet, they can’t empty their bladders fully, so urine dribbles out before or after they go to the bathroom.
Incontinence can also be stress related and/or there may be other physiological causes. The key is discovering what the reason might be and ensuring your child can have this issue resolved. Long term it may affect their confidence, their schooling and their socialising.
If your child has been experiencing incontinence for more than a month or has never had any dryness, it might be a sign you need to have the cause diagnosed.
At CCH we have a physiotherapist at our clinic who specialises in children with incontinence. The first thing we ask is how your child is being impacted by the incontinence because that could affect the treatment decision.
We also look at other ways we can help you, and your child, relieve some of the stresses associated with this condition, i.e. by establishing regular toilet schedule, or by looking and understanding behavioural approaches or sometimes medication may be necessary.
More reading
https://www.continence.org.au/pages/children.html
http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/urinary_incontinence.html
