NISHA Gupta was extremely harassed, as she walked into my clinic.

Nisha's seven-years-old son Rohan had a 'tough problem' that she couldn't discuss over the phone - "a problem that has made me stop visiting my relatives and socialising!" Nisha admitted.

What severe problem such a sweet little child pose his mother, that she would be embarassed to even talk about it?

Nisha told me, "My son wets his bed - almost every night."

For Nisha, this is a big let-down. "He was supposed to stop doing that four years ago! On all other counts, Rohan fares well - he is even doing well in school. I don't know where I am going wrong," Nisha vented her frustration.

My first reassurance to Nisha Gupta was: Rohan is absolutely normal and bedwetting is not an isolated problem.

It is natural for parents to sweat over this seeming behavioural anomaly in an otherwise perfectly normal child. Most mothers are not very clear about possible reasons why a child can't stop wetting his bed, and what to do about it.

The normal age for bladdr control:

The normal age varies from child to child.

On an average, most children acquire control and learn to regulate their bladder during the day, by the age of three years.

The average age for acquiring control over one's bladder at night, is achieved at about five years.

Even if a child continues to wet the bed after this age, s/he recover and improve slowly, at the rate of about 15 percent per year.

It means, among hundred children who wet their beds after the age of five, fifteen of them would recover completely by their sixth birthday. Out of the remaining eighty five children, another eleven or twelve children would have learned bladder control by the seventh birthday.

Unless there is some serious underlying disease, most children get control over their bedwetting by 12. It is rare for a child to continue into adulthood with this problem.

It is only when the child is mentally challenged, or if s/he has a severe neurological or hormonal problem, that the bedwetting continues into teenage and adulthood.

Photograph: santarosa / Flickr.com