Skip to main content

Bed Wetter

 


Confession: I was a bed wetter. I wet the bed on most nights up until I was at least five-years-old. My mom tried various things to deal with this: a rubberized sheet under my sheet, no water late at night; I even remember maybe taking some medication. The doctor said it was a combination of being a heavy sleeper with a small bladder. In retrospect, the doctor seems like he was a sensible man (though if I did take pills for it, I have to wonder what was in those pills). What my mom and dad absolutely did not do, was to make me feel shame about this. I didn’t think too much about this at the time. I was blissfully unaware that many children were traumatized by bed wetting and by their family’s reaction to it. This is yet another reason for me to be very grateful for the parents I had.

They did not punish me for wetting the bed. I seem to remember getting a nickel for every night I managed not to wet the bed. Logically, as a tool, this is no more effective than punishment. Neither the carrot nor the stick is going to have an effect on the outcome. This was not a function that could be controlled by willpower. But I was happy to get the occasional nickel. It is good that my parents did not believe in punishing me for it, because studies have shown that punishment tends to make the matter worse.

It was unpleasant. No one likes waking up on a sheet soaked in urine. It was often cold by the time I woke up, and it smelled. It was uncomfortable, but I was not traumatized by it. It was just one of those things that had to be endured. I was aware that this was unusual, that other children my age were not wetting the bed. I don’t have any Earth-shattering pronouncements about this, except to say that I would hope that any modern parents out there faced with this situation would treat their child with the kindness that my parents did. I seem to have turned out okay.

Star liner

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Child of the . . .

  What was it like to grow up as a child in the 90s? How about the 1940’s? Thinking about a child growing up in each different decade, conjures up images in my mind. But that is all they are: images. I was a child in the 1960’s. I can tell you what it felt like to be growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, but what it felt like to me is not what the history books remember. History will tell you the 60’s was about the Viet Nam War, civil rights, and the space race. The 70’s was Disco and Watergate. I remember being aware of all of those things, but to me this era was about finding time to play with my friends, something I probably share with a child of any decade. It was about navigating the social intricacies of school.   It was about the Beatles, Three Dog Night, The Moody Blues, The Animals, Jefferson Airplane. It was Bullwinkle, the Wonderful World of Color, and Ed Sullivan. There are things that a kid pays attention to that the grown-ups don’t. Then there are things the adults ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bureaucrats

  I am one of those nameless, faceless bureaucrats. Yes, that is my job. Though I actually have a name; I even am rumored to have a face. Bureau is the French word for desk, so you could say bureaucrats are “desk people.” In short, I work for the government. I sometimes have to deliver unpleasant news to a taxpayer. I sometimes have to tell them that the deed they recorded won’t work and they will have to record another one with corrections. Or we can’t process their deed until they pay their taxes. I can understand why some of these things upset people. The thing is, we don’t decide these things. It is not the bureaucrats that make the laws. The legislature writes the laws. We are required to follow the law.   If you are going to get mad at someone, get mad at the legislature. Or maybe get mad at the voters who voted the legislature in (That’s you, by the way). The same thing happens when the voters vote in a new district, or vote for a bond, or a new operating levy for an ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Telephonicus domesticus

Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone from 1877 bears about as much similarity to the modern smart phone as an abacus bears to a PC or Mac. There are just about as many leaps in technology in both cases. It’s funny how a major jump in technology happens (like the actual invention of the phone). Then there are some refinements over a few years or decades until it gets to a useful stable form. Then it stays virtually the same for many years with only minor innovations. The telephone was virtually unchanged from sometime before I was born until I was about forty. Push-buttons were replacing the rotary dial, but that was about it. (Isn’t it interesting though that when we call someone, we still call it “dialing?” I have never seen a dial on a cell phone.) Cell phones were introduced and (once they became cheap enough) they changed the way we phone each other. New advancements followed soon after, texting and then smart phones. Personal computers were also becoming commonplace and wer...
Post a Comment
Read more