Good Nites and Rubber Pants

RO writes to ask about her 6 year old son who wears a disposable diaper like Goodnites to bed every night. He wets so much that they leak so she has him wear rubber pants over the top. She wonders if the rubber pants and pull-ons are preventing him from getting to night time dryness.

I am frequently asked this question, especially by parents who have more than one child in Good nites or other disposable underwear. Keeping children dry and sheets clean can be frustrating for parents so using disposable pull ons and plastic pants can certainly help with this.

Until a child and their family are ready to move to the next step, this can be a huge time saver. Wearing Good Nites and other waterproof protection is certainly important in situations where laundry facilities are not handy or sleepover/ camp situations where being discreet is of utmost importance. It's a great advantage to have these products available.

If you begin to notice that your child is waking up with a dry pull-on more often, trying a challenge of a couple of weeks without protection is recommended.

During this time, using a waterproof mattress underpad, which is a waterproof pad that lies on top of the sheet, is prudent. Overlays are a fabulous product for decreasing laundry load and keeping children comfortable.

If wetting occurs, you simply remove the overlay, replace it with a clean one, and have your child go back to a dry bed. When your family is ready to take the next step toward dryness, a great time to transition to cloth underwear is when you begin using a bedwetting alarm.

The bedwetting alarm senses the moisture from the underwear, alerting parents and child that wetting is occurring. A bedwetting alarm is an effective tool to help your child's body make a change in the way it responds to a full bladder.

If your son persists in having nightly wetting with the disposable pants over the next few months or year, he is a great candidate for using a bedwetting alarm to help him get to dryness.