Teaching Children About Their Body: The Bladder

So where does pee come from and how does the bladder work?

Teaching your child about their bladder is a great way to help them understand how their body functions and why they need to use the potty or toilet regularly. If your child is bedwetting, it can be empowering for them to learn about their ability to control it through learning about the bladder and what, exactly, it does. 

Today’s lesson: the bladder

Start by describing the bladder using the following prompts, you might also like to collect some images and videos from the internet to help you explain what it looks like and how it works. 

Where is it?

The bladder is located just above the pubic bone.

To help your child understand this, have them put their hand over the space where their bladder lies. If they push gently, they might feel the need to pee - that’s great! It means they’ve found it and can now recognise what that feeling means.

What is it? 

The bladder is a muscular sac, about the same size as an orange when empty. 

How does it work?

1. The kidneys produce pee to get rid of any waste in your body. This is important to get rid of nasties and toxins!
2. Once the pee is produced, it travels from the kidneys to the bladder.
3. The bladder stores it until you need to go to the bathroom.
4. When it’s full, there are nerves in the bladder to tell your brain that it’s time to pee!

Why do we need to pee?

We need to use the toilet for a few reasons:

1. It ensures that our body keeps the right amount of water. When your pee is pale, it’s because your body is getting rid of extrawater.
2. The body takes what it needs from food and drink, and the rest is released as waste in the urine.

Helping your child to recognise when their bladder is full

Work together to come up with a system that will help your child learn how to recognise and respond to their bladder being full. Here are a few ideas:

Set an alarm

Set an hourly alarm during the day to alert your child that it’s time to bring attention to their bladder. They might like to place their hands on their bladder to see if it’s full. 

Use a bedwetting alarm

The Oopsie Heroes are the perfect team for helping your child to stay dry during the night. Simply attach the bedwetting alarm to the outside of your child’s underwear and be notified by phone when your child’s bladder is ready for a trip to the bathroom.

Make it easy to use the potty

Teaching our children to recognise when they need to use the toilet is a great step, but we also need to make it easy for them to do this independently and at a moment’s notice.

Dress them in clothes that are easy to take off and let them practice with pulling their pants up and down - forget about dresses and dungarees during this time and these can really get in the way with potty training!

Here’s a video for a fun way to learn about the bladder!