Bed-wetting can be embarrassing for the child and exhausting for the mother. Sleepovers are out of the question. All that money spent on laundry could be spent on food (which isn’t getting cheaper). The time you spend stripping the bed, washing the sheets, and remaking the bed, day after day, could be spent working from home and spending quality time with your child.
My son wet the bed every day. The pediatrician told me that it was nothing to worry about because the bladder does not mature until the age of 7. But then why didn’t all the other children’s mothers he knew wet the bed? As a working mom, she was tired of wasting my precious time and money washing sheets all the time.
From experience with my son and as a Montessori preschool teacher, I have learned three simple ways to stop bedwetting and ADHD behaviors at the same time. This article will focus on a primitive reflex called the spinal Galant reflex.
What’s that?
The spinal Galant reflex is one of many primitive reflexes present at birth. Most people are familiar with the suck and seek, the grasp (palmar reflex), the startle reflex (Moro reflex). These are all important developmental milestones that doctors look at to judge a child’s development. The spinal Galant reflex exists to help the baby move through the birth canal. A light tap on the lower end of the column does it instantly and unwittingly move your back to that side.
This reflex is active at birth and is normally integrated and then inhibited by nine months of age. Children delivered by cesarean section often do not integrate this reflex. Unless there is intervention, the reflex remains active into adulthood. My son was born by cesarean section. Therefore, it was only natural that his Spinal Galant Reflex would remain active even in elementary school.
Many children who have an active spinal Galant’s reflex have trouble sitting in their chair for a long period of time and tend to wet the bed. If you tell this child to sit up straight with his back against the chair, the chair will tickle his back and he will find all sorts of awkward positions to keep the chair from touching his back. This hinders their ability to pay attention in class. Then, they label him as a child with ADHD.
An active Spinal Galant reflex can cause bedwetting because contact with bedding triggers that reflex. Tickling can have the same effect. In the preschool where I worked for three years, several children who had active Spinal Galant reflexes could not sit still for long. It seemed that his funds were spring loaded. They worked and ate standing at the table. At circle time, they rolled on the floor instead of sitting on their stomachs. Also, they used to wear the pants like a plumber, below the waist. Nappers tended to wet the bed at nap time.
We did a simple rocking exercise, moving the children’s hips while the children were lying on their stomachs in bed, every day at nap time. This exercise comes from Rhythmic Movement Training and helps integrate the gallant spinal reflex. After several months of this rocking, the reflex integrated and stopped wetting the bed. I also do this exercise with my son. He helps her calm down. He is now able to sit through a full meal. He can even complete an entire task in one sitting. He rarely wets the bed anymore.