My 5 Year Old STILL Pee's His Pants, HELP!

Children's Hospital has a special program for children with poo & pee problems. Please call them immediately. This type of problem needs to be addressed, and gets worse with time.

My sister and b-in-law were too slow on dealing w/this w/their child, who now wears pull-ups and pads at all times at age 10. Cringe! And she smells.

The night time stuff can take years and to lessen the stress, don't punish him. He has zero control at night, so get him the bigger kids version of pullups or wake him before you go to bed to get up and pee until his body gets he needs to wake.
As far as during the day. I would first talk to your Pediatrician and make sure it isn't anything going on with his bladder or kidneys. He may very well not be able to help it. Once you have ruled out all the medical things not being an issue then do this"

Start going backwards. Put him in a pullups during the day, be matter of fact and take away most of his "big boy" stuff. Fold up his underwear and just say "I guess you aren't ready for this just yet".

Don't punish him, don't get angry, just say "well we have tried and if you are not interested in going to the bathroom like a big boy, all big boy priviledges are done with until you can show me you are ready". Almost like re-potty training. Any big boy toys or special priviledges he got for being 5 need to cease. He is a big brother so that will maybe push him a little harder to try and step it up. He has to go to bed earlier, no 5 year old TV shows and so forth. Not to be mean but to maybe get through to him that if he wants these things he needs to earn them back. Then it is his choice not yours and he has the control so it will be easier in the long run.

Don't shame him or make a big deal out of it, but explaining that he has to take time out to go pee. When he is at home, set a timer for every hour, tell him to please go try and make sure he does at least go try. It is kind of backwards but he hasn't been fully potty trained if he is still peeing his pants at least once a week. Getting the brain to connect to the bladder and teaching him again and over again to reconnect and associate he has to stop what he is doing and go so he doesn't pee his pants and hold it until he gets to the bathroom is crucial.

First rule out anything medical. Then if it is all good just go backwards. Most 5 year olds aren't going to tolerate anything associated with not being a big boy, so if you are whatever about it, then he may start getting the connection.

Good luck.

Hi C. ,
I have a little girl that is potty trained and still peas her pance once i a while. but we use the night time pull ups for her so when she does pee the bed its in her pull up and not all over the bed. if he's peeing his pance on purpose. I think you you might want to talk to your doctor and make sure he dont have a bladder infection. thats what i would do if my daughter was stil peeing her on purpose. I hope this helps your situation.

Hi C., I first just wanted to let you know youare not alone! In fact, I posted a very similar post just a few months ago! My little boy is 5 and 1/2 and has the same situation.
I will tell you that things immediately improved when we stopped all forms of punishment including acting disappointed in him when he wet. (the exception is the few times he has actually said things like "oh, I didnt want to pause my game" and has wet due to pure laziness).
If you have not yet, talk to your pediatrician asap. Unfortunately we did have to do multiple doctors appointments and this is not going to be an easy solution sort of thing. we had to do a test for urinary tract infection, then we did a VCUG at Primary Childrens, which checks for bladder abnormalities (if you do this, i would recommend sedation, but I also must say that their staff was awesome and that other than it being a long day and a rather large doctor bill, it was not art all traumatic). Finally, we have put my little guy on Oxybutinin which is really inexpensive. The key with this medicine seems to be consistancy. I have found that if I miss 1-2 doses he will start wetting, for several days in a row. But things have improved dramatically since we have been consistant about the medication.
I still do not know when this will resolve itself, my doc says that it could be years. SO... really, may I suggest pullups at night, I killed myself for a year washing bedding daily because I felt like buying pullups was like admitting to him it was ok to pee the bed... so dumb in hindsight. Pack an extra pair of pants and underwear in backpack if he is going to school and be sure you talk to teacher about the situation. They deal with this sort of thing more than you would know.
I hope some of my experience helps you! I was at the end of my rope a few months back and seriously, this was eating at our whole family as we didnt know how to deal with it. This almost feels like a non-issue now, Accidents rare and the doc has just said once he goes 6 months without wetting to try going off medicine but go back on if needed. I feel like I am not going to even worry about the bedtime issue till we resolve the daytime wetting as they are totally different things. Good luck to you and if you need to talk further let me know!

I'm not sure what to do about the daytime accidents, but I have 2 nieces that had that problem at night, both until the age of 7. My brother would not let them drink anything past 7:00 PM, and would wake them before he went to bed and tried to get them to go. I'm not sure if that helped, or if they just grew out of it on their own.

I hope you find that helpful, and good luck!

Hi C.,
My Sister's little boy is now 7 and he is doing the same thing. She took him to the Dr. and he actually has a medical problem. They were able to give him some medication to help him recognize and to wake up in the night. He has been free of accidents fro 4 months. It can be stressful, but sometimes it's a medical issue.
Take him to your Pediatrition. My nephew also had issues with Bowel Movements, he was so glogged up he wasn't able to recognize that he needed to go. Again another medial issue. Good luck

C.,
My second daughter had this same issue and it drove me nuts!! Until she had a urinary tract infection that was found. She had had it for a while but didn't know that going to the bathroom wasn't supposed to burn! After a few months of continuous infections, the ped. doctor had her get checked out with an x-ray (VCUG), which she did amazingly while the nurse was placing the cathater without being sedated. We were able to be in the room with her while she was having this all done. We found out that the little muscle that tells them they have to pee wasn't very strong at all and was causing our daughter to have kidney reflux. Her surgery to repair this was done at Primary Children's in Salt Lake. The staff was amazing. We went to the instruction class that they hold for the kids explaining what will be happening and what the instruments are that measure blood pressure and listen to hearts, etc. She was really lucky by having the nurse that spoke to her at the class as her nurse for her surgery. We talked lots about what would be going on during the surgery until she felt okay with everything. She was 7 at the time and had a wonderful support group of friends and a great teacher that had the class make a huge card for her. If you want more info, feel free to email me.

Talk to your dr. about it, they may send him to a urologist to check his insides. I took my son at about age 6 and he was diagnosed with an overactive bladder. It also has to do with that when he goes, he does not empty his bladder completely. Being a very busy little boy, he would go as fast as he could to get back to playing. Also had a little to do with constipation. My son went "#2" at least once a day but was not clearing everything out. So a few things if you dont want to do the dr. thing. During the day, increase his fluids to get his bladder stretching and growing. Make sure he has regular "good" bowel movements, and stop the fluids at least an hour before bed. If he eats or drinks before bed, it triggers his brain to make more urine. Keep the pull-ups, they will save your laundry bill :). Good luck, it takes a long time but it does get better.

Take him to a urologist, I am sure that he doesn't WANT to pee his pants, maybe he can't control his bladder yet or maybe he gets UTI's that make it painful to "hold it in." It's worth looking into.

I feel bad for him. He probably doesn't like it either...Waaaay back, my girlfriends daughter had this problem. They finally consulted with a doctor who introduced them to a monitor that was worn in the child's underwear at night, and an alarm would go off when there was wetness to remind the child to get up and finish in the bathroom. They also did what were called fluid challenges. Her daughter would drink x number of ounces and once she told her mom she needed to go, she would need hold it for extending periods of time to help her bladder muscles strengthen and help her recognize the feeling of the urge to go. I seem to remember the first time she would need to hold it for 10 minutes, and as time went on they worked up to 30 mins and more. I seem to remember it was 5 minute increments. it took awhile, but she was able to solve her problem, so maybe it is worth asking your Dr about. I don't know all the details and would for sure do homework before you did anything...but hopefully this gives you an alternative to consider. Good Luck

Have you asked your health care provider about possible medical issues?

Is it possible that he still physically lacks the ability to know when to go? My daughter had issues with this until well past four - she just didn't get signals from her body that she needed to pee until it was very close to too late, if she got signals at all. Perhaps it would be helpful to have him "go" on a schedule for a little while. This helped us. Every hour or so we'd stop whatever we were doing and go potty just to see whether she needed to. By kindergarten she was able to "feel a tickle" and recognize the urge to go.

I hope this helps.