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I realize there have been quite a few articles written on bedwetting already, but I just wanted to put one out there that looked at something that has only been mentioned in passing thus far, and that is the parental factor.
For whatever reason, bedwetting has always been a
big conversational topic in our family, so I think everyone knows when everyone else stopped wetting the bed. And in my family, I'm the unusual one. Although I stopped wetting the bed by the age of 2 (that's what my mother claims, anyway) my older brother was between the ages of 8 and 10 and my mother herself was at least 10. HER siblings all wet the bed until they were at least 10, and I have a cousin who would still wet on occasion at the age of 15 or 16. My son finally stopped completely at the age of 12 and although my husband doesn't really like to talk about it, he has insinuated that he was probably a teenager or pretty close by the time he finally stopped. Has anyone else ever noticed that it runs in families? It must.
Essentially what I would say worked at our house was just realizing that bedwetting was going to happen, giving it time, putting no pressure on our kids about it, and keeping stress to a minimum for them. My son went from wetting the bed almost every night when he was 8 to once a month a year later at the age of 9. Okay, once a month is still a lot, but what changed from the age of 8 to 9? His life calmed down. We tried all the other tricks after 9 to try and get him completely "cured": no fluids after a certain time, waking him up to go before we went to bed, and just talking to him about it, and these things all seemed to make it worse. What really cut down on the bedwetting was when he finally obtained a relative level of stability in his life, as it had been pretty chaotic before that. Also, after my son had improved a great deal he had a MAJOR relapse at the age of 10. He had been down to wetting once every couple of months by then and suddenly went back up to weekly. Why? A school camping trip where he heard a bunch of ghost stories that had him freaked out for six months. He went back to wetting the bed several times a week because of this interruption to good sleep! In my experience stress is definitely a factor. Another example would be my cousin who wet into his teens and also had a very volatile childhood with seven or more stepparents and getting moved around a lot to deal with between both of his parents' marriages.
Now of course, some kids have a stable home environment and still wet the bed for a long time. This would be the case with my daughter. She's 5. She was in training pants until a half year ago when she finally came to me and said, "Look, I don't want to wear these any more." And for the most part, she knew what she was talking about. She has an accident every couple of weeks or so, and she's embarrassed about it, but I just let it slide and keep plastic sheets on the bed. Considering what I know about her father's bedwetting history AND her maternal grandmother's, I think this is to be expected. There may be pills out there, as was mentioned in one advice article I read, but what has worked for us has been just riding it out and letting the kids know it's okay. They aren't abnormal and we won't hold it against them. All the other tricks may work for some, but they didn't at our house, so all I can say is, just try and be patient! And be thankful for washing machines and dryers!
(April 2008) (
I can't imagine anyone would look down on you for that, and it's great to know these things! It's just more proof that late bedwetting is normal! That sucks that your brother humiliated you about it, but that's what siblings are for, right? 
That is a great example, though, of how bedwetting can be a sign of something else going on in a child's life, just like with my son and his relapse bedwetting because of the ghost stories. So I guess I'd like to amend that a sudden reappearance of bedwetting (or other regressive type behaviors like thumb-sucking or even baby talk out of the blue) should be looked at as a possible symptom of something else going on with your child that you might want to figure out and take a look at! 
