USE OF PULLUPS

[LULEW]

My stepson (5yrs) sleeps in underwear at our house.  His mother still puts him in pullups for bed.  He does very well at our house.  Mostly he only wets the bed the first night he is with us.  

Is her use of pullups detrimental to his training and social development?  She kept him in pullups daily until the daycare refused to let him move to the 4yr old class until trained.  The other children teased him for wearing pullups also.

Also, I am certain it is confusing to his system.  Can this lack of effort on her part be used in a custody hearing?

Thanks.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

It goes without saying that when children live in two households it is best if expectations are uniform. But it's a less-than-perfect world, and often children experience different expectations and childrearing practices. Try to focus your energies on doing the best job you can while your stepson is with you. It usually creates tension if one set of parents is overly focused on what another set of parents might be doing. This does not sound like an issue that would be very determinant in custody matters.

[lifeisbetter]

Wow, I had to breathe deeply before I wrote this. Your post made me really sad and a little angry. The only thing I got from your post is that you are trying to win custody of your step son.  Please, please consider that a custody issue is outrageously more detrimental to a child than wearing pullups at five. You may have serious issues with the mother but your step son doesn't. That's his mommy and when you don't like his mommy he thinks you don't like him. Please don't take offense but, I really felt some bitterness from you, and whether you should feel that way or not, really isn't the issue. If I can pick up your anger from a written question on the internet, you should be absolutely sure the child senses it too.

[Tatertotsmommie]

I have a 7 year old son, who was toilet trained around his third birthday, but who still has occasional problems with bedwetting at night (once or twice a week).  His doctor has ruled out medical reasons for this, and has attributed it to the fact that he is a heavy sleeper and that his bladder is smaller than average for his age.  He wears GoodNites at night, which are essentially pull ups in larger sizes for older children.  It is his choice whether or not to wear these, and he always chooses to wear them.  We used to put him in underwear every night, but it got to the point that it was affecting the amount of sleep he was getting, because he would wake up soaking wet in the middle of the night and I would have to do a whole pajama and linen change on his bed; it wasn't always easy for him to go right back to sleep after all that.  I would like to say to the woman who posted this question,  have you ever imagined what it would be like to wake up shivering and soaking wet in a pool of smelly urine?  If anything, the pull-ups give my son some dignity while dealing with a problem that embarrasses him and is completely and totally not anybody's fault.  Whether wet or dry, he just tosses the pull-up in the wastebasket first thing in the morning and trades them for underwear.  Also, you say that "I am sure this is confusing to his system".  Well, if his mother has the boy on most nights, then you are the one who is disrupting his system if you are putting him in underwear when he is used to the pull-ups.  Why not make it his choice?  A five year old is capable of deciding whether he wants to wear them or not.  Also, you call the pull-ups a "lack of effort" on his mothers part, but this does not make sense to me.  Wearing pull-ups or underwear makes no difference on if the boy is going to wake himself up to go to the bathroom or not.  If this is the worst thing you can say about this boy's mother, I would say good luck trying to take custody because if you try to make an issue of this in court, it would probably make you look worse than it would her.

[amywatts]

I've had two sides of the coin:  A girl who was trained by the age of 2 (100% time in panties, no accidents whatsoever and she's 5 1/2 now) and I have a 3 year old girl now.  She didn't take to going on the potty. Liked her pull-ups. But we switched her to panties one night and after the first night, she stayed DRY for three months straight, accidents at all.  Then she had a bout of diarrhea and we put her in a pull up for three days.  After that, she wet her panties constantly.  She will not wake up to go potty if she's wearing a pull-up, she will if she's wearing panties.  We're back to panties now.  Full-time.  

If the kid is 5 and capable of wearing underwear (he apparently does at this gentleman's house), then why in the world does the mom put him in pull-ups?   If he has no physical problems in the potty area, then she's holding him back.  The little boy wets the bed the first night because his body/brain is telling him he can.  For the people here who are against the poster, at what age should the mom start really working on getting the 5 year old potty trained?  This might be rude, but it sounds like a lazy parent to me.

I wonder what other issues the mother has.  This just might be one of many.  Custody battles are sometimes war-zones, unfortunately.  If this is indicative of how she's raising the kid, maybe the kid would be better off with the dad.  Who knows?

By the way, I have no "step-parent issues"...I don't have any step-kids and I never had a step-parent.  So I'm not coming at it with an attitude.