Why I Chose the Goal I chose
The most frustrating part of my bed wetting as a child was not the wetting itself, it was my parents' inability to accept it. From the time I was 3 until I was 7 years i was taken to every doctor and specialist they could find. After spending another doctor visit being poked, prodded, and pricked, they all had the same discussion with my parents. "It happens to some kids and we don't know all of the reasons why. He is not suffering from any of our known ailments that causes bed-wetting so just teach him to diaper himself and wait until he grows out of it". My parents would huff out of the doctor's office complaining about the money they wasted on his fee and start the search for another opinion from a different doctor. Finally, at age 7 I firmly told my parents I was tired of going to all of these doctors only to be told the same thing. My parents finally relented, but they never followed any the doctor's advice either. To them, diapers were only for babies, and since I was no longer a baby, they were not going to allow me to wear diapers to bed.
To them, allowing me to diaper myself was allowing me to continue to wet the bed, while to me diapering myself at night was preventing my morning routine of awaking in a urine soaked bed with my PJ's clinging to my body. I was a teen in high school before I finally grew out of my bed wetting and though my parents said they were through with the issue when I was 7, they continued to take pot shots at me until I finally outgrew the malady. I wish I could some how convince parents that dealing with the problem with pull-ups/diapers is not giving in to the child's desire to wet him/her self during sleep. During the nights I wet the bed I was never aware of my accident until I woke up, yawned, and stretched. Only after I stretched would I then feel the wetness. How can you expect a child to stop doing something he /she is not aware they are doing. You are not allowing the child to do anything, you are making life easier for you, the child and the rest of the family. But those people that want to believe the child is doing it on purpose, will continue to believe the child is doing it on purpose, yet when they get into a disagreement with someone else, they want the person they're talking with to see their point of view. IT BAFFLES MY MIND!
To them, allowing me to diaper myself was allowing me to continue to wet the bed, while to me diapering myself at night was preventing my morning routine of awaking in a urine soaked bed with my PJ's clinging to my body. I was a teen in high school before I finally grew out of my bed wetting and though my parents said they were through with the issue when I was 7, they continued to take pot shots at me until I finally outgrew the malady. I wish I could some how convince parents that dealing with the problem with pull-ups/diapers is not giving in to the child's desire to wet him/her self during sleep. During the nights I wet the bed I was never aware of my accident until I woke up, yawned, and stretched. Only after I stretched would I then feel the wetness. How can you expect a child to stop doing something he /she is not aware they are doing. You are not allowing the child to do anything, you are making life easier for you, the child and the rest of the family. But those people that want to believe the child is doing it on purpose, will continue to believe the child is doing it on purpose, yet when they get into a disagreement with someone else, they want the person they're talking with to see their point of view. IT BAFFLES MY MIND!
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It is amusing how my bed-wetting is responsible for my favorite past time, model railroading. This is how it came to be. When I was 10 years old my mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas that year. (1963) I told her I wanted an electric train set. She said it was too expensive, what else did I want, I said all I wanted was the train set. I didn\'t want anything thing else but he train set. After talking it over with my dad, it was agreed that all I would get that Christmas was the electric train set. Mom was not happy with the agreement so she told my three brothers that because I was selfishly sticking to my guns on this train set idea, that everybody\'s Christmas would be smaller than usual.
One of the main rules I had to live with was if I awoke wet, I had to go straight to the tub and wash off the previous night\'s accident. The smell of urine made my mom sick to her stomach. The only day this rule was not enforced was Christmas morning. Since mom was still aggravated about the train set, this particular Christmas morning as my brothers and I raced to the tree to see what Santa brought, mom stopped me in my tracks with her favorite morning question, \"Are you wet?\" \"Yes\" I said, \"Then go bath!\" she demanded. \"But it\'s Christmas!\" I reminded her. \"I said go bath!\" she said curtly. So while I was washing off the previous night\'s accident, my two older brothers were having a tug-of-war with \"our\" train set to determine who was going to run it first. All they succeeded in doing was to pull the trucks off the engine, so when I got cleaned up and made my way to the tree, I was greeted with a broken train set that I couldn\'t run. My dad was sooooo mad that he refused to get it fixed. I thought within myself that one day I would buy my own train set and then no one could say anything about it. After college, I hired on with one of the two Railroads operating in my state, only because they were the first company to call me back when I applied. Then my youngest brother said, I guess you can buy your own train set now. I did and I\'ve been adding to it ever since.
That is how my bed-wetting led to my love of model trains!
Lovely story