Wearing Diapers Past Potty Training

[Kari]

Being a childhood bed-wetter in the 70's was not easy to deal with.

I thought that I was the only one to ever have the problem.

No one talked about it publicly and of course, there was no Internet.

My Mother use to shame me and threaten to put me back in Pampers.

She thought humiliation would make me stop.

Now I obviously know it was never my fault.

Some nights I had to sleep in a damp bed from the night before.

I would hope and pray she would finally just go out and buy me diapers.

But she never followed up on the threats and didn't stop till age 10.

Some say they were diapered for bed-wetting and/or punishment.

As if wearing diapers was as traumatic as me sleeping in a wet bed.

I wonder what kids these days think about Goodnites and Underjams.

They are still a diaper, just made for the intended purpose.

Is there a new generation out there that feels shame from those methods as well?

[Khoraz]

I would say yes, to a point. Many kids these days view diapers as a bad thing as parents nurture them to associate the act of needing them past "x" age as bad. If society did not view bed-wetting or the need for diapers past a specific age as a bad hing, I would assume that kid would care less. I am stating facts here, just my opinion. I feel that society has all the influence on weather a kid views them as bad or not. As I am from a younger generation than you I can say that friends who did wear them didn't think twice about it as none of my friends cared about the issue! But to answer your question about the parental methods of using fear, I would still say it exists. Maybe not tailored to bed wetting specifically, but in general parent still use fear as a tool. Obviously, not all parents.

[sarah_ab]

i've worked with loads of children who are past the typical 'potty training age' but who for one reason or another wear pull ups either just at night, or during the day as well, and honestly, not a single one of them seemed to really care.. most likely because at that age children do not have the insight to understand that its 'not normal' or 'different'

at 4/5/6 years of age children are still inherently shelfish and do not often think of the feelings of other people, its not a fault in them, its natural, a developmental stage, and children do not have the insight to concentrate on such sophisticated emotions as embarassment, at that age its happiness, anger, sleepiness, tiredness.... kids don't know embarassment, jealousy, etc.... they just know i want, i need, i'm happy, i'm sad etc....

so when people 'claim' to 'remember' how they 'felt' at those young age, it is really unrealistic to think these were the true emotions..... did the actually events happen? sure they could have, but no one is able to accurately remember their emotions, because in retrospect we assign emotions to experiences as we think we should have felt, forgetting that what we know now, we didn't know 'then'.

oh well.... trust me, kids don't really care if they wear diapers to bed, most parents don't make a big deal out of it, its just what the kid wears to bed, and as such most kids dont realize its not normal.... i've worked at summer camps where one or two of the campers in the cabin at 8 9 or 10 years of age still wore a pull up to bed due to bedwetting, and sure there was always that one jackass kid who would point it out, but none of the other kids would ever really care... it was just something 'sally' or 'jane' wore at night and that was it.....

so remember what you 'think' you felt as a child, is 99.9% of the time inaccurate and only ar eflection of what you imagine you would feel if you were a child in the same position then, but with all the knowledge you have now.

[timmyc]

I don't have kids but I think it it is less traumatic to wear good nights out of need. Kids are diapered longer than they used to be. Being threatened with Pampers was a big deal, as noted earlier they have a baby on the box they are for babies and to be out of them and put back in them, makes someone feel like a baby. Goodnights and others either have an older kid on the pack, or just writing and parents are more tolerant. Goodnights are designed for bigger kids and the marketing departments have almost made it ok. I think the desire to get kids dry is there but the methods have changed.

[Kari]

I don't have kids but I think it it is less traumatic to wear good nights out of need. Kids are diapered longer than they used to be. Being threatened with Pampers was a big deal, as noted earlier they have a baby on the box they are for babies and to be out of them and put back in them, makes someone feel like a baby. Goodnights and others either have an older kid on the pack, or just writing and parents are more tolerant. Goodnights are designed for bigger kids and the marketing departments have almost made it ok. I think the desire to get kids dry is there but the methods have changed.

Is that really why they eventually stopped using the "Pampers Baby" as their logo?

It was about 10 year ago I think.

Use to look at him/her when I went to the store as a kid and an adult.

Like loosing an old friend...

[timmyc]

sarah with all due respect, their is a huge difference in AB/DL feelings discovered as an adult and actively used in your sex life than being 3, 4 even 6 years old and being threatened with diapers as a punishment for accidents, being exposed to a couple kids who were punished with diapers and secretly wishing it was you. I very clearly remember numerous feelings about diapers, and pretty sure even though well intended at the time, my family's attitude about potty training in the early 70's and the threat of being put back in Pampers for an accident or a wet bed, is why I still have strong feelings for them today. I think things are different now, and goodnights are seen as a necessity for some older kids, not a punishment or a way to shame them into staying dry.

[timmyc]

Is that really why they eventually stopped using the "Pampers Baby" as their logo?

It was about 10 year ago I think.

Use to look at him/her when I went to the store as a kid and an adult.

Like loosing an old friend...

I think the real reason was they wanted boys and girls, blacks and whites, Asians and Latinos they want their product to be friendly to all consumers. They still have babies on the packaging and the as the diapers get bigger, the kids get older, heck some of the kids on Underjams look like they are almost thinking about the prom but they want it to be ok for older kids to use their product. An older kid on the package makes it far more normal, than having a baby on the package.

[sarah_ab]

no what i was saying is that feelings we 'remember' explicitely having at a certain time usually were never there...... basically we remember events, we 'attach' the fgeelings we think we would have had at the tiem, to those events in retrospect....

for example... aperson who is an adult remmebers their parents putting them in diapers at night due to night time wetting, that person assumes this would be embarssing because if it happened to them now at their present age it would be humiliating, so the person asssumes they were embarassed as a child, and thus whenever they remember wearing these diapers as a child they now have convinced themselves they were embarassed, all this done subconsciously.... people do this with all memories as a child... and while yes some of them are accurate most liekly, there is no way to know.... sorta like how you can 'give' a child memories that never existed, yuou can 'give' your memories all sorts of emotions and feelings that were never there when the actually event happened...

another example, i remember falling down at a friends party and cutting my knee. I don't remmeber the pain, i don't remember if i was embarassed or upset, or even if i cried but i imagine when a kid falls and cuts their knee they cry, so whenever i think of falling down, i have myself crying as well...... did i really cry? i don't know....

so i was just saying, we shouldn't hold all this stock in how we seem to think we remember we felt because chances are its completely inaccurate... so assuming a child who's parents put them back into diapers for bedwetting is embarassing and angry... well its just assuming....

i was not trying to make any comparison to abdl sexual feelings and those of a child of 3 4 5 or 6 years of age... but rather saying that the feelings an adult assumes a child should have during a certain time, often become the feelings the adult 'remembers' themself having at certain ages...

[justagirl4fun]

I would say yes, to a point. Many kids these days view diapers as a bad thing as parents nurture them to associate the act of needing them past "x" age as bad. If society did not view bed-wetting or the need for diapers past a specific age as a bad hing, I would assume that kid would care less.

It's funny, but this is pretty much the opposite of what I have observed over the past decade or so. I've found that parents are much more tolerant of diapers these days and most do not push the training at an early age as was common when a lot of us here were children. There seems to be an attitude of letting children decide when they are ready, of parents not wanting to inflict the supposedly harsh potty training methods of their parents on their children. I don't remember ever seeing any kids older than 2 or 3 in diapers when I was a kid (of course there were some, but I never noticed) whereas now it seems almost every time I go to the playground, library, etc with the kid I babysit, I see 4 and 5 year olds in diapers. And I also don't think that society in general sees bed-wetting as a bad thing anymore. There is so much information about bedwetting available these days, about how it is not the child's fault, that it is actually very common and normal (I don't remember all the statistics, but I think I remember reading that as many as 20% of all 5-year-olds wet the bed, and it goes down a little for every year after that). It seems to me that decades ago there was definitely a stigma attatched to bed-wetting, even for kids who were only 3 or 4. Now, I hear of doctors that refuse to even consider bed-wetting to be a medical condition for children age 5 and under, and will not consider any treatments to stop it until the children are above that age. I think that if parents were not so accepting and understanding of bed-wetting, products like Pull-Ups, Goodnites, and Underjams would not be as successful...more parents would still be buying the largest baby diapers available, pretending that they are buying them for a toddler, instead of going into stores and buying a product that is obviously intended for older children with wetting problems.

[timmyc]

so i was just saying, we shouldn't hold all this stock in how we seem to think we remember we felt because chances are its completely inaccurate... so assuming a child who's parents put them back into diapers for bedwetting is embarassing and angry... well its just assuming....

to the average child, I would agree, but for those of us that diapers made such am impact on our psyche that we carried the feelings for 35-40 years or more. I do think the feelings were very strong and pronounced. I don't know Kari, other than what I read on here, but I think we had similar childhoods (with our similar avs, I think we have similar feelings and memories too). Potty training aftermath I am sure is but a fuzzy memory for you, for some of us it was a huge fingerprint that shaped our formative years. Not saying you are wrong and not saying my diaper fetish is better than your diaper fetish. But growing up in different eras and under different circumstances what was significant to me growing up, may have been just another day to others. I have fuzzy memories, you remember things, you forget a lot more. I might not know what I ate for lunch a week ago, but certain memories of being threatened with Pampers are crystal clear as to where I do not believe them to be created memories.

[justagirl4fun]

Is that really why they eventually stopped using the "Pampers Baby" as their logo?

It was about 10 year ago I think.

Use to look at him/her when I went to the store as a kid and an adult.

Like loosing an old friend...

Pampers still uses babies on their packaging, I think. I don't think getting rid of the old logo had anything to do with not making older children feel embarrassed for needing a "baby" product. The logo was dated. Most products update their logos every so often to make them look more modern and make them more appealing to today's consumers.

[timmyc]

jg4f, what is your age range? don't have to be specific just curious

[timmyc]

wow a valid discussion, with good points on both sides and respect shown all around, quick we need someone to lock this up or even delete it, we can't have this sort of behavior going on.

[Guest BambooLand]

My mom told me I was totally out of diaper before my third birthday and never wet the bed. Strange because now I can't get enough of the damned things.

I had a cousin who wore Pampers to bed. He was 8 at the time, I was younger, but it didn't phase me that he wore Pampers at night. In fact I made no comment at al about it and we slepped in my room in my bunk bed when his family visited from Texas.

In fact I remember his mom coming in just before bedtime and telling him to put it on lol...

This was in 1983 and he wore the big, thick Pampers with tapes....he didn't think I knew, but I did but just didn't say anything because I didn't care.

[justagirl4fun]

jg4f, what is your age range? don't have to be specific just curious

I just turned 25...for the 5th time.

It seems to me that the attitudes towards potty training and bed wetting took an abrupt turn during my childhood. I was never a bed wetter and was potty trained shortly after turning 2 (I have no memories of wearing diapers or of my potty training experiences) but my twin occasionally wet the bed until age 7 or 8...not every night, buy often enough to be an annoyance to my parents. I do remember my dad threatening to make her wear diapers if she did not stop. My brother, who is 6 years younger than I am, was also a bed wetter, but for him it lasted until age 11 or 12, I think, and he wet almost every night. I remember him getting scolded for it a lot when he was younger. Then when he was maybe 6 or 7 my parents seem to have adopted the "it's not his fault, he'll outgrow it eventually" attitude. I think Pull-Ups were introduced around this time and they started buying them for him. I remember seeing a lot of articles about bedwetting in the newspaper and magazines about this time (lol I was a smart kid and was always reading my mom's magazines like Readers Digest, Family Circle, Women's Day, etc) that explained that kids can't help the bed wetting, that there are medical causes, it isn't for attention, etc.

[timmyc]

I was not "a bedwetter" but I did wet the bed a few times here and there. I was never put back in diapers, but I know the threat of it being a possibility was always there, as a threat to keep me from doing again. Any accidents were frowned upon. My Grandma threatened "me" with diapers, when the neighbor girl had an accident. It was like being put back in diapers, Pampers specifically was this big bad worst thing imaginable. I know, I did not want that. As I got older by say 10 I wished they had followed through with the threats

It was shameful and humiliating. We didn't have pull ups, training pants had to be washed, and they leaked on the floor accidents were far less tolerated.

[Kari]

I have a purple box of Pampers as my avatar for a reason.

Because the color of the box, smell and even the word Pampers® (in that font) or spoken aloud is a big trigger for me.

The last box of Pampers I saw in my house was that kind since I was the youngest.

I remember around age 4 or 5 my mother giving away "my Pampers" to a friend with a baby.

And I think I was upset to see them go, but was too shamed to say anything.

Seems deep or even weird to explain it in that much detail, but that's what "I think" I remember.

[timmyc]

I use a Purple box of Pampers as my avatar.

Because the color of the box, smell and even the word Pampers (in that font) or spoken aloud is a big trigger for me.

The last box of Pampers I saw in my house was that kind since I was the youngest.

I remember around age 4 or 5 my Mom giving them away to a friend with a baby.

And I think I was upset to see them go, but was too shamed to say anything.

Seems deep or even weird to explain it in that much detail, but that's what I think I remember.

oh I am pretty sure if when I was between 5 & 6 if current diapers existed, I wouldn't have the same feelings for them as I do now. I know exactly how you feel about the box, the feel the smell. The blue overnights were my first real exposure but the purple box, and the bigger orange box that came out a little later were huge memories too. Lost some appeal when they went to pastel poly bags and a lot more when the baby went away.

[happyindprs]

My former boss has three children, two daughters and one son. The son is the middle child and also the last one out of diapers. My ex-boss never punished his son or humiliated him or made an example of him for still wearing diapers. His son was diapered both day and night up to the age of four and a half. His son was ready then and grew out of his need to be diapered. He is now a perfectly well adjusted kid of ten years, active in sports and getting good grades. It sure sounds like a better success story than trying to force a child to conform, now doesn't it?

[Yvhuce]

no what i was saying is that feelings we 'remember' explicitely having at a certain time usually were never there...... basically we remember events, we 'attach' the fgeelings we think we would have had at the tiem, to those events in retrospect....

for example... aperson who is an adult remmebers their parents putting them in diapers at night due to night time wetting, that person assumes this would be embarssing because if it happened to them now at their present age it would be humiliating, so the person asssumes they were embarassed as a child, and thus whenever they remember wearing these diapers as a child they now have convinced themselves they were embarassed, all this done subconsciously.... people do this with all memories as a child... and while yes some of them are accurate most liekly, there is no way to know.... sorta like how you can 'give' a child memories that never existed, yuou can 'give' your memories all sorts of emotions and feelings that were never there when the actually event happened...

another example, i remember falling down at a friends party and cutting my knee. I don't remmeber the pain, i don't remember if i was embarassed or upset, or even if i cried but i imagine when a kid falls and cuts their knee they cry, so whenever i think of falling down, i have myself crying as well...... did i really cry? i don't know....

so i was just saying, we shouldn't hold all this stock in how we seem to think we remember we felt because chances are its completely inaccurate... so assuming a child who's parents put them back into diapers for bedwetting is embarassing and angry... well its just assuming....

i was not trying to make any comparison to abdl sexual feelings and those of a child of 3 4 5 or 6 years of age... but rather saying that the feelings an adult assumes a child should have during a certain time, often become the feelings the adult 'remembers' themself having at certain ages...

Exactly. Memories aren't entirely reliable, and sometimes may be outright contrary to what actually happened. As I've mentioned before: Either the Discovery or Science channel conducted an experiment involving a faked UFO crash scene with actors as unarmed MPs, police tape, and a bit of debris. Many of the people involved reported seeing a whole ship (wasn't there), alien bodies (there were none), and that the MPs aimed their guns at them (they were completely unarmed). None of them remembered the experience exactly as the hidden cameras revealed it to be. Our memories are fluid. They change with our moods, thoughts, preconceptions, expectations, fears, desires, etc...

[curiositykilledthecat]

kids do not know they're different unless someone else points it out.

[Yvhuce]

Kids also tend to point out and turn on the one who they notice is different... And they can be so very cruel...

[toddmdl]

My former boss has three children, two daughters and one son. The son is the middle child and also the last one out of diapers. My ex-boss never punished his son or humiliated him or made an example of him for still wearing diapers. His son was diapered both day and night up to the age of four and a half. His son was ready then and grew out of his need to be diapered. He is now a perfectly well adjusted kid of ten years, active in sports and getting good grades. It sure sounds like a better success story than trying to force a child to conform, now doesn't it?

I think that's how parents should be handling the process in my opinion. Although I was treated the exact same way and eventually I grew out of physically needing to wear diapers but emotionally I was not. I still remember when I was about five and I no longer wet the bed and toilet trained not too long before that. I still remember not long after I was out of them fulltime asking my mom to buy me pullups. She never said no but she never bought them, ignored the request from what I imagine. I clearly remember being hurt and disappointed so I didn't make that up years later but I never voiced my opinion on the matter at the time either out of shame. For some reason although I was really late for a kid toilet training I was never emotionally ready to leave diapers and I guess I'm still not and I doubt I will ever know why that is the case for me.

[curiositykilledthecat]

Boys do take longer to potty train on average. I babysat a group of kids who ranged from 12-4 and the four year old was still in diapers. He was just starting to show interest in moving past them, however every kid responds in their own time.

[nice-n-snug]

This is the most fascinating thread I've ever come across. It's especially interesting to see that others have been so deeply affected by the classic Pampers brand and everything that went along with their particular experience in that regard. Whoever would've thought that a baby product and relatively simple advertising would have such a dramatic effect on so many?

I'm starting to get the impression that the good 'ol "back to Pampers" threat was a lot more common in the 70's (and maybe 80's as well) than I ever would've guessed. I had my traumatic "back in Pampers" experience as a 6 year old in '77. There's a lot more to the story, of course, but I am absolutely convinced that that very shameful episode in my life made me the adamant ab/dl I've been for so long now. And much like "kari," the word Pampers and the vintage boxes, logo, font, and various types all serve as "triggers" for me. It's funny now, but because I enjoy being ab/dl so much I'm actually glad things happened the way they did. And it is too bad that the cherub faced baby became dated. His face absolutely exuded to the

world that he was warm, comfortable, and loved; and the reason was obvious.