Source| Zeng Qifeng Psychological Studio
ID:zqfxlgzs
"Three-year-olds deliberately wet the bed, how to beat?"
I saw a question on Zhihu, a three-year-old child who deliberately urinated on the bed, and happily told his mother after peeing.
When his mother spanked him, he couldn't laugh.
Of course, the mother beat him up and down, not really, or to deter the child.
Children also often pour on the bed when drinking drinks, and they can't laugh when they are finished. I really don't know what to do anymore.
Seeing this little puzzle, I feel a little cute and a little helpless.
Bedwetting is not only a physiological behavior, but also a lot of psychological motivation behind it.
In the eyes of three-year-olds, they are "all-powerful". Your own behavior is like a switch, which can cause anger in your parents.
In order to get his parents' attention, even if it is negative attention, he is very willing to touch the switch. Not to mention that the mother is not really fighting, and the high and low slap is more like a kind of teasing play.
When the mother is angry and the child is dominant, the child has a condescending feeling, and in this small power struggle, he has won.
More importantly, the "urine" thing is a part of one's own body and an extension of one's own body in the consciousness of a 3-year-old child.
Just as dogs like to pee under trees, children are willing to leave their mark in different places.
The behavior of 3-year-old children wetting the bed seems to be deliberately mischievous. In fact, their desire to be cared for, their desire to swear sovereignty, is a sign of the germination of their sense of self.
These psychological needs, I am afraid, no matter how the slap falls, cannot be solved.
Searching for the term "bedwetting" on the Internet, there are children and adults of different ages, all of whom are confused about bedwetting.
We eliminate physiological lesions, and more can solve the problem of bedwetting from the psychological level.
"Bedwetting ruined my life"
I saw a story online about a girl who urinated on bed once when she was five years old.
Mom thought she meant it, so she scolded her loudly, saying that if she wet the bed again, she would sleep on a wet mattress.
She was so frightened that she was afraid of wetting her bed that night, and she did not dare to sleep until the middle of the night. Unexpectedly, she wet the bed again.
In the compound where many people lived, her mother yelled that she had taken out her mattress to dry, and scolded her in front of the whole compound.
Later, she tried not to drink water or eat at night, and as a result, she wet her bed more frequently.
From the age of 5, the disgust of her parents, the ridicule of others, accompanied by the smell in the air, is the main theme of her life.
She really didn't want to wet the bed, but she really couldn't control it. When she grew up, she did not dare to fall in love, for fear that the boy she liked would know her past, and that anyone close to her would be able to smell her body.
A bedwetting at the age of five, perhaps a very fortuitous event, ruined the child's life.
It is true that children have the ability to defecate spontaneously around the age of 3 and should not be unable to control defecation.
However, on the surface, human growth is "anterograde", but in fact, many times it is "regressive".
In many inadvertent moments, we retreat to what we were in infancy and do infancy things.
The behavior is not the most important, what is important is the psychology behind the behavior.
I always heard my mother talk about her experiences as a child, when the three sisters and their parents slept on a kang. The second sister always wet the bed, and neither she nor the eldest sister dared to squeak.
The three sisters often spent one winter and summer after another in the cold and wet bed, because they were afraid of being beaten up by their father after saying it.
It is precisely because of this that the three sisters did not dare to talk to their fathers since they were young, and they were full of fear for the role of their fathers.
What a terrible punishment to ruin the fatherly love of three girls because of the small matter of bedwetting!
Bedwetting is the tilt of security
After the age of three, children's bedwetting is often unconscious.
Behind the unconscious, it is actually the subconscious mind that is at work.
When a child encounters difficulties, hurt, fear, anxiety, the instinct is to run away and run to the safest place.
The safest place in the world, of course, is the mother's womb. But we can't really go back there, so we can only retreat to infancy, to swaddling.
We will find that children are very prone to bedwetting after experiencing some changes in their lives.
I saw a content sent by a mother on Weibo, saying that Erbao rarely wet the bed. The reason is that I have just recently entered the kindergarten and have anxiety about entering the kindergarten.
This is the sign of regression and the cry of their desire for security.
My eldest daughter also had a period of regression when she was over 4 years old. At that time, I had just given birth to the second treasure not long ago, and suddenly there was a small baby in the family, and the big treasure did not resist on the surface.
But in terms of behavior, she began to wet her pants frequently. Sometimes she was just reminded to go to the bathroom, and she peed directly into her pants after a while.
When I go to bed at night, she will occasionally push me and tell me that she wet the bed.
I knew that bedwetting was a manifestation of her anxiety, that she could not face the changes in her family, that she was not mature enough to perceive her own heart, and that she did not even know how to express her uneasiness in words.
She can only allow her subconscious to retreat and then enjoy the "special attention" brought to her by bedwetting – her parents finally stop looking at her little sister and rushing to take care of her.
I know that this is a manifestation of the child's desire to be noticed, a manifestation of her anxiety.
I didn't blame her, and every time I wet her pants, I calmly changed her clothes and gently instructed her to "try to go to the toilet next time."
At the same time, I will also pay as much attention to her as possible and create more "two-person worlds" with her. Bedwetting only happened intermittently for a month, and she never wet the bed again.
The child's bedwetting is a signal from the mind. If this signal is received and satisfied, then the signal will not continue to be emitted.
On the contrary, if parents can not see the child's heart and do not accept their psychological signals, their signals will always be transmitted.
Bedwetting should not be punished
What is needed for the growth of children is rules and order.
Within the space of rules and order that we give them, what they need is understanding and love.
Of course, we have to train our children to go to the toilet, and we must tell them that it is best not to wet the bed and wet their pants.
But if we know that children really don't mean it, and they can't control themselves, then we shouldn't blame them.
According to the Expert Consensus on the Management of Monosymptomatic Nocturnal Enuresis Disease in Chinese Children, about 16% of 5-year-old children, 10% of 7-year-old children and 5% of 11-12-year-old children have nocturnal enuresis.
There are not a few children who wet the bed, and the way parents deal with it is also very critical.
As parents, we must distinguish between "really doing something wrong" or "just a matter of age", whether it is "wrong behavior" or "psychological needs".
The child deliberately pees on the bed, which is really wrong in behavior; the child wets the bed in his sleep, which is a matter of age and psychological needs.
There is no need to punish children for some inadvertent behavior, and there is no need to force them to correct them by creating shame for them.
Huang Lei once sent a Weibo, saying that the second daughter wet the bed at night, and he not only did not blame, but also said that he knew how she wet the bed.
It must have been a night dream of looking for a toilet, and finally found it, and then it felt cold.
His practice has won the praise of the whole network.
Probably, we all hope that we are also the child who is tolerated.
We all hope that when we unintentionally make a mistake, we can get the forgiveness of our parents.
We all want to have the comfort of our parents when we have a longing in our hearts.
We all hope that when we make our parents angry, they can see our hearts.
* Author Miao Dai, the article is reproduced from Zeng Qifeng Psychological Studio, nearly 2000 original parent-child/gender/personal growth psychological articles, psychoanalytic learning, 7 years of companionship, less inner conflict, more spiritual freedom.