Bathroom problems when first waking up

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12/05/2025 18:49

Subject: Bathroom problems when first waking up

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Anonymous

My daughter is 10, no developmental or health issues that we’re aware of and I’d describe as a typical 10 year old.

Since the summer she’s developed a very occasional, and very odd habit/issue that I just can’t get my head around what’s causing it or how to help.

We were on a camping trip in the summer, and one morning as soon as she woke up she took herself off to the bathroom block and came back shortly afterwards very upset that she’d wet herself. Now this was totally out of character, she’s been potty trained since a toddler with no problems, and never even really struggled with bedwetting, perhaps a handful of accidents in her life. But of course we played it down, reassured her and just chalked it up to one of those things - accidents happen, and perhaps she’d just not wanted to get out of her warm sleeping bag and left it too late.

Since then it’s happened at home maybe half a dozen times, always first thing in the morning when waking and on the way to the bathroom, with absolutely no other related issues - no daytime accidents or urgency and no wetting the bed. Each time she’s seemed embarrassed, but I did still half wonder the same thing, whether she was perhaps awake and not wanting to get up but then leaving it too late. You’d think the embarrassment of walking across a campsite in wet pjamas would be enough to ensure she was more careful, but with no other explanation I assumed it must be that and gently encouraged her to make sure she got straight up and used the bathroom when she woke.

Anyway last weekend it happened when she was sleeping over at a friends house, which seems to disprove that theory as surely there’s no way she’d put herself in that position around a friend! She’s of course absolutely mortified, so much so she didn’t even actually tell me it had happened until I found her wet PJs screwed up in the bottom of her bag. I wasn’t sure whether she’d perhaps wet the bed, as rare as it is it has happened maybe once or occasionally twice a year, but I managed to coax out of her that it was the same type of accident, albeit this time her friends sister had been in the bathroom but had come straight out as soon as she’d knocked and called through the door, too late and finding my daughter very distressed having wet herself at the doorway.

She’s now terrified of sleeping away from home or having friends to stay here, and I just don’t know what to do to help. If it was bedwetting then there’s obviously lots of treatments and resources to try, but this just seems so unusual, I’ve never heard of another child experiencing the same so it’s difficult to know what might help, or to properly reassure her.

Very conscious that with middle school approaching sleepovers will likely become a much bigger deal for the girls, and wet pants would be far more embarrassing potentially leading to bullying, but with it happening just after she wakes up it seems there’s not much she (or I) can do to stop it. It’s almost as if, had she stayed asleep even a few minutes longer, she would have we the bed as the urgency to pee is so great on waking that she can’t hold it for the couple of minutes it takes to get out of bed and to the bathroom, but it’s so random and sporadic - some mornings it can be half an hour before she uses the bathroom, and the vast majority she has no issue, but this handful of times ends in a puddle. And it never does lead to a wet bed, even if I leave her to sleep later, the last accident she has whilst asleep was nearly a year ago, and before that perhaps 2 in the previous year. It’s so odd!

Any help greatly appreciated, I want her to be able to enjoy sleepovers with her friends without the worry and stress of what could go wrong, and I hate seeing her upset.