Published: March 17, 2008 08:24 pm         

THEREFORE I AM: Will a new Ferrari stop bedwetting?

I'd like to begin this column with a pre-emptive apology to my son. "Phil, I'm sorry I'm telling the whole world about your bedwetting problem. I hope you don't come across this column when you're 15. If you do, I'll completely understand if you want to beat me up. Just give me fair warning before you take the first swing."

There, now that that's out of the way and now that I've avoided a fat lip in the year 2018, let's move on. ("Remember, Phil, give me fair warning.")

My son is 5 years old and is still peeing in his bed on a regular basis. Why am I telling you this? Simple. Because having thousands of people read about it is the only course of action left that I haven't tried. Nothing else has worked, so perhaps a public outing will do the trick.

Oh sure, our pediatrician says it's nothing to worry about, but she's not the one who's laundering Phil's sheets every single morning. That gets old in a big, big hurry. There have been mornings when I've had TWO sets of sheets to clean. Phil will wet his bed at, say, 3 in the morning. My wife or I will clean him up, trade wet sheets for dry, and put him back to bed. Fast-forward a few hours to when our alarm clock goes off, and we discover that Phil has wet his bed yet again.

It's hard for the day to recover after a beginning like that.

I'd like to think the wife and I are fairly sharp when it comes to parenting. We're not rookies anymore. We've been in the game for nearly seven years now. In addition to our own common sense, we seek out words of wisdom from so-called experts who write books, consult on magazine articles, post blogs and do whatever else it is that parenting experts do (apart from actual parenting, I suppose). Plus we ask everyone for their thoughts: grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, grocery store clerks, bartenders, you name it.

No one has come up with a solution, and that leaves me with sheets that need to go in the dryer — again.

Common sense says that you should limit his fluids in the evenings. We do that. He rarely drinks anything after dinner.

When he goes to bed he wears "pull-ups," which is a nice way of saying "diapers for older kids." Sometimes that will save the sheets, but not always, and it doesn't do anything to solve the actual problem. It just attempts to minimize the soggy results.

I had a notion that if I woke him up a few hours after he went to bed and directed him to the bathroom, that would work. He would use the bathroom when I woke him up, but invariably he would also wet his bed later in the wee hours (so to speak). I guess I could set my alarm for 1, 3 and 5 a.m., and get him to the bathroom every two hours, but I need my sleep, too. All that laundry can get exhausting.

Positive reinforcement: We told Phil if he woke up dry three days in a row, he'd get a new toy. It didn't work, so I'm thinking of offering him a Corvette.

Negative reinforcement: Last week we had the bright idea of eliminating the "pull-ups" from the equation. Our thought was that eventually (surely!) he would realize that being soaked to the skin at 3 a.m., without the handy absorption of his "pull-ups," is pretty miserable. Certainly he would take steps to avoid it. Nope. So much for negative reinforcement.

All the while we've been careful not to crush his self-esteem. We don't get mad. After all, the kid's asleep. What parent in his right mind would get angry about something a child does when he's asleep? That's like my wife getting angry about the dream I had about a bikini-clad Jennifer Aniston and I vacationing in Tahiti and drinking mai tais with the Hamburglar. I can't be held accountable for anything my mind does while I'm asleep. Neither can Phil.

That being said, I'm not sure what else I have left to try. Maybe we just need to wait him out. Most of the "experts" say bedwetting is a problem that almost always resolves itself, but that's just not my style. I'm the type of person who prefers to solve a problem rather than closing my eyes and hoping it goes away.

I'm sure there are some veteran parents among my loyal readers who have a thought or two. Feel free to share them. My email address is below. Short of electroshock, I'll try most anything.

Maybe a Ferrari would do it. "You wouldn't beat up your Dad when he's trying to buy you a sports car, would you, Phil?"

David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@tds.net.