Hi, I’m Dr. Catherine. The DriNites bedwetting expert and today we’re going to talk about how your child’s bed wetting may impact negatively on their self esteem. Children who wet the bed are acutely aware of other added others attitudes towards bedwetting, making them particularly sensitive to negative attitudes and belief. As a parent you’re often really concerned about the impact that bedwetting may have on your child’s social and emotional adjustment. When we’re looking at self-esteem and self-confidence we find that self-esteem is really built through successful experiences. Which means that when your child isn’t experiencing success when it comes to developing nighttime continents it may impact negatively on their self-esteem. The important thing to be aware of however is self-esteem is multi-layered so just because your child might feel bad about themselves when it comes to developing nighttime continence, they may feel really positive about themselves in relation to other aspects of their life like being really good at school or being good at making friends. So what’s really important as a parent is to ensure that their negative attitudes towards their bedwetting does not impact on their general sense of self.
High self-esteem is really important because it influences all areas of your child’s development. Children who have high self-esteem tend to cope with stressful situations much better, so they cope with things like bedwetting. Also, higher self-esteem is associated with much more popularity amongst children and these children are also more goal-oriented so they’re much more likely to look forward to the future and see life after bedwetting.
As a parent, there are lots of things that you can do to make sure that your child has high self-esteem. The first and most important thing is to help your child to identify all those things in their life that they do really well. You also need to help them see the importance of effort and commitment and not just outcomes. Help them to identify the difference between controllable events and uncontrollable events. So children with high self-esteem will see bedwetting is something beyond their control so the fact that they’re not particularly successful in that regard will not impact negatively on their self-esteem. Also help them to replace those negative self statements with more positive ones. So when your child says I’m such a baby or I’m really hopeless, make it more realistic so tell them really it’s just about your bladder so they say things like gee this bladder of mine really isn’t working very well.
Also let them know that it’s okay to make mistakes. Mistakes are how we learn and finally praise your child and minimize the criticism. If you have to be critical be critical of the behaviors but praise your children constantly and most importantly show interest in your child. Parents who spend time with their children at the message that you’re giving them is your worth while I want to spend time with you which makes sense, if your parent is saying things like that of course you’re going to feel good about yourself. If you’d like to hear more on how bedwetting may impact on your child’s self-esteem, please visit me at the DryNites website, www.drynites.com.au.
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