Question: What causes a child to wet the bed? Our five-year-old soaks his sheets nearly every night, which drives me crazy.

Dr. Dobson: There are about five to seven million kids in the United States who wet the bed nightly. They are a misunderstood lot. Many of their parents believe that their bed-wetting is deliberate and that it can be eliminated by punishment. Others think these kids are just too lazy to go to the bathroom. These are wrong and unfortunate notions.

Bed-wetting is often caused by medical factors, such as a small bladder, physical immaturity or other physical conditions. That's why you should begin by consulting a pediatrician or a urologist when bed-wetting starts. Many of the kids can be helped or cured by medication.

For other boys and girls, the problem is emotional in origin. Any change in the psychological environment of the home may produce midnight moisture. During summer camps conducted for young children, the directors routinely put plastic mattress covers on the beds of all the little visitors. The anxiety associated with being away from home apparently creates a high probability of bed-wetting during the first few nights, and it is particularly risky to be sleeping on the lower level of bunk beds!

There is a third factor that I feel is a frequent cause of enuresis. During children's toddler years, they wet the bed simply because they are too immature to maintain nighttime bladder control. Some parents, in an effort to head off another episode, begin getting these kids up at night to go to the potty. The youngster is still sound asleep, but he or she is told to "go tinkle," or whatever. After this conditioning has been established, the child who needs to urinate at night dreams of being told to "go." Particularly when jostled or disturbed at night, the child can believe he or she is being ushered to the bathroom. I would recommend that parents of older bed wetters stop getting them up at night, even if the behavior continues for a while.

Question: I get so mad at my kid for wetting the bed. Every morning I have to strip and wash his bedding and pajamas. I told him last week that I would spank him if it happened again. Do you think that will help?

Dr. Dobson: Most certainly not! Unless your child's bed-wetting is an act of defiance occurring after he is awake, which I doubt, his enuresis is an involuntary act for which he is not responsible. Punishment under those circumstances is dangerous and unfair. Your son is humiliated by waking up wet anyway, and the older he gets, the more foolish he will feel about it.

The bed wetter needs reassurance and patience from parents, and they should be there for him or her. They would be wise to try to conceal the embarrassing problem from those who would laugh at him. Even good-natured humor within the family, associated with bed-wetting, is often very painful.

Question: Aside from medical help, what suggestions do you have for dealing with enuresis?

Dr. Dobson: There are other remedies that sometimes work, such as electronic devices that ring a bell and awaken the child when the urine completes an electrical circuit. This conditions a child to associate the feeling of needing to urinate with the bell that awakens him. I have seen some dramatic success stories where "hard-core" bed wetters were cured within a few weeks using such a device. Trying it certainly can't hurt.

QUESTION: My wife and I are above average in height, being six-feet-three-inches and five-feet-nine-inches tall. We both had rather tall parents, too. Nevertheless, our daughter is very tiny. She is nine years old and is only at the third percentile for height. What could be causing this, and what do you think we should do?

DR. DOBSON: There are many factors that influence a child's growth, including a deficiency of growth hormones, heredity, nutrition and the status of the boy or girl's general health. There is only one way to know what is causing your daughter's failure to grow, and that is to take her to an endocrinologist or other physician who specializes in these problems. The right doctor can identify her condition and even predict with a fair amount of accuracy how tall she will eventually become. In some cases, growth hormones may be administered, although I'll leave it to your physician to make that recommendation. Since your girl is nine years old, you have no time to lose. Get her to the right medical authority quickly.

Let me ask, by the way, is your daughter an anxious child?

QUESTION: Yes, as a matter of fact, she is. Lannie is the most insecure of all our children. Why do you ask?

DR. DOBSON: Because some studies have shown that persistently anxious girls tend to be shorter than their peers. This was the finding of Dr. Daniel Pine of the National Institute of Mental Health and other research at Columbia University College of Physicians, New York. This research showed that the most insecure girls tended to be about two inches shorter as adults and were twice as likely to be under five-feet-two-inches tall than girls who were less anxious. Two specific disorders in the formative years were most predictive of less height in adults: (1) separation anxiety -- seen in girls who don't have the confidence to spend the night at a friend's house or go away to summer camp; and (2) overanxiousness -- not just being uneasy about a threat or problem, but a generalized worry about many things over years of time.

One study showed that anxious girls had high blood levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which can stunt growth. Interestingly, anxious boys in the investigation were not found to have higher cortisol levels, and they did not tend to be shorter than their peers. This suggests that girls may respond to stress biologically differently than boys. For whatever reasons, anxiety is linked to lesser growth in females alone.

Once again, you need to have your daughter examined and evaluated medically. There may be a more obvious and treatable reason for her growth deficiency.

QUESTION: Our children are all on their own now, and my husband and I are free to do some of the traveling we have always planned to do when we got them through college. But lately I feel too tired even to keep the house clean and too depressed to care about planning or doing anything extra. I'm only forty-six, yet some days I can hardly get out of bed in the morning. I just want to put my head under the pillow and cry -- for no reason at all. So why do I feel so terrible? My husband is trying to be patient, but this morning he growled, "You have everything a woman could want. ... What do you have to be blue about?" Do you think I could be losing my mind?

QUESTION: When discussing adolescence, why do you focus your comments on parents? It's the kids who do crazy things.

DR. DOBSON: I'm particularly concerned about idealistic and perfectionistic moms and dads who are determined to make their adolescent perform and achieve and measure up to the highest standard. In so doing, they rock a boat that is already threatened by the rapids. Perhaps another child could handle the additional turbulence, but the unsteady kid -- the one who lacks common sense for a while and may even lean toward irrational behavior -- could capsize if you're not careful. Don't unsettle his boat any more than you must!

I'm reminded of a waitress who recognized me when I came into the restaurant where she worked. She was not busy that day and wanted to talk about her twelve-year-old daughter. As a single mother, she had gone through severe struggles with the girl, whom she identified as being very strong willed.

"We have fought tooth and nail for this entire year," she said. "It has been awful! We argue nearly every night, and most of our fights are over the same issue."

I asked her what had caused the conflict, and she replied, "My daughter is still a little girl, but she wants to shave her legs. I feel she's too young to be doing that, and she becomes so angry that she won't even talk to me. This has been the worst year of our lives together."

I looked at the waitress and said, "Lady, buy your daughter a razor!"

That twelve-year-old girl was paddling into a time of life that would rock her canoe good and hard. As a single parent, Mom would soon be trying to keep this rebellious kid from getting into drugs, alcohol, sex and pregnancy, early marriage, school failure, and the possibility of running away. Truly, there would be many ravenous alligators in her river within a year or two. In that setting, it seemed unwise to make a big deal over what was essentially a nonissue. While I agreed with the mother that adolescence should not be ushered in prematurely, there were higher goals than maintaining a proper developmental timetable.

I have seen other parents fight similar battles over nonessentials, such as the purchase of a first bra for a flat-chested preadolescent girl. For goodness' sake! If she wants it that badly, she probably needs it for social reasons. Run, don't walk, to the nearest department store, and buy her a bra. The objective, as Charles and Andy Stanley wrote, is to keep your kids on your team. Don't throw away your friendship over behavior that has no great moral significance. There will be plenty of real issues that require you to stand like a rock. Save your big guns for those crucial confrontations.

Let me make it very clear, again, that this advice is not relevant to every teenager. The compliant kid who is doing wonderfully in school, has great friends, is disciplined in his conduct and loves his parents is not nearly so delicate. Perhaps his parents can urge him to reach even higher standards in his achievements and lifestyle.

My concern, however, is for that youngster who could go over the falls. He is intensely angry at home and is being influenced by a carload of crummy friends. Be very careful with him. Pick and choose what is worth fighting for, and settle for something less than perfection on issues that don't really matter. Just get him through it!

QUESTION: What would you do if you had an elementary school child in a chaotic classroom with a disorganized teacher?