Frustrated parents are often told "don't worry about bedwetting! Your child will outgrow it". But a major bedwetting study in the British Journal of Urology (May 2006) concludes that many kids will never outgrow bedwetting - unless they get help. And it found that the best way to know if your child absolutely needs help is by how often he or she wets. This study found that if a seven-year-old is wetting just 1 or 2 nights per week, he has a 96% chance of outgrowing it by age 15. Even seven-year-olds who wet 3 to 6 times a week have a 76% chance of outgrowing it by age 19. But a seven-year-old who wets every night will almost never stop without getting help!

The vast majority of bedwetters are simply deep sleepers. Because of this, they fail to recognize bladder contractions (the urge to urinate) like others do while asleep. So they can't respond the way others do - by resisting the urge, or by waking up to visit the bathroom.

Bedwetting does not result from laziness. It is not due to poor parenting skills. It is not due to lack of some special diet, or especially to drinking fluids in the evening - we all do that!

Some early researchers thought small bladder size was involved, but later studies showed this is seldom true. Even when it is, failure to recognize the bladder contractions is still the central issue, since we all experience bladder contractions regardless of bladder size. If the contractions were recognized, the bedwetter could respond normally.

Around 1980, some researchers in Europe decided to prove that a hormone deficiency was to blame. Since a natural hormone called vasopressin controls how quickly fluids reach the bladder during sleep, they checked to see if bedwetters had less of this hormone than other kids. Some did, some didn't. So the results were inconclusive. But this theory simply ignored the fact that dry kids are dry because they respond in their sleep to bladder contractions, either by resisting them or by waking.