Question
My son has been urinating frequently lately, more than ten times a day, and I’m worried if this is abnormal.
Answer
If a child is experiencing frequent urination, parents should first consider whether there are central nervous system diseases, such as epilepsy or encephalitis. If these conditions are ruled out, it may be related to urinary tract infections, possibly involving issues like phimosis, balanitis, overactive bladder, urine reflux, or kidney stones. If all tests show no abnormalities and the child exhibits characteristics of psychogenic frequent urination, the doctor may diagnose it as “psychogenic frequent urination syndrome.” For the treatment of psychogenic frequent urination, psychological therapy should be the first step. After understanding the cause, behavior therapy, known as “urination retention training,” is conducted. Parents may wonder, isn’t holding urine bad? In fact, whether to hold urine should depend on the urine volume. Only when the bladder is full (over 400 milliliters) does it count as holding urine. If the urine volume is only a few hundred milliliters, this is just a normal storage process of the bladder and is necessary for the effective contraction of the bladder. The bladder needs to be filled to a certain degree (over 200 milliliters) to have a strong stream of urine. If the urine volume is too low (the bladder is not yet full), it will cause a sensation of residual urine and trigger the next episode of frequent urination, forming a vicious cycle. Therefore, “urination retention training” uses holding urine to suppress the urge to urinate in order to increase bladder storage capacity, but it should not exceed 400 milliliters of bladder capacity. Since “400 milliliters” cannot be measured, parents should observe the amount of urine each time their child urinates and the speed of urine release to make a judgment.