Dry Bed Training for Child

Dry Bed Training(DBT) is a method that is a multicomponent behavioral program that first uses the baseline status to establish the night-time pattern of the child’s bedwetting. DBT is actually similar to normal intensive daytime toilet training. It is the most commonly or frequently used intervention. In a short period of time, with the great effort of the trainer, we can get a rapid outcome.

The important fact in this practice is that it uses positive reinforcement for dry bed and getting up at night time for urination, and also they use the punishments for accidents.

This particular method includes the usage of urine alarms and initially, uses many trials to rehearse the control and retention training.

In phase 1 of this procedure is like the following way: Urine alarms are placed in the bedsheet or under the bedsheet. The child will be provided with 2 glasses of fluid, 30 minutes before going to bed at night.

The child is purposely awakened in between at night with a minimal prompt for urinating. If the child goes to urinate within 5 minutes, then reinforce and give the child another 2 glasses of fluid. And if the child does not urinate within 5 minutes then give the child 2 glasses of fluid. For the achievement of the desired target response, we give a reinforcement, so here we have to give the child reinforcement for the dry sheets and tactile feedback for it as well. Then we will gradually move to the second phase when no more than 1 accident happens in a night and the child uses the toilet correctly at almost half of the percentage of toilet visits.

 Phase 2 uses the urine alarm in the same way as in phase 1 and no hourly awakening or no fluids are given, so the child has to perform the routine without the help of the trainer and the extra fluid intake.

Then the trainer will make the child change the wet bed sheet and his clothes by himself. Here, the child will get a positive use of the toilet. We will return the child’s routine to phase 1 if the child makes more than one accident in a night. After one week or 7 nights, if no accidents occurred then we can remove the child’s urine alarm and the awakening in between in the nighttime. Inspect the bed in the morning to confirm if the bed sheets are dry. If there is any mistake or accidents then we will return the child’s return to the start of phase 2.

This intervention method is found to be more effective than the use of urine alarms alone and overcoming a few shortcomings of simple urine alarm programs like a high recurrence rate on the withdrawal of the urine alarm device.

The Dry Bed Training is not only the night-time arousal for urination but also for the strengthening of the sphincters, increasing the bladder capacity and rapid movements from the bed to the toilet.