Day-care diaper alarm effective

ANTWERP, Belgium, June 9 (UPI) -- A daytime diaper that uses a musical "wetting alarm" for children in day-care centers is effective for toilet training, Belgian researchers found.

Study co-author Jean-Jacques Wyndaele of University Antwerp said toilet training is a milestone in a child's development and rearing but the age of initiation of toilet training has increased from under 18 months in the late 1940s to 21-36 months today.

Thirty-nine healthy young children between 18-30 months old were selected at random for a wetting alarm diaper training or control wearing a placebo alarm. Toilet behavior was observed during a period of 10 hours by independent observers before the study, at the end of the three-week trial and two weeks after training.

The study, published in the journal Neurology and Urodynamics, found that children in the wetting alarm diaper training group achieved independent bladder control 51.9 percent of the time and did significantly better than the control group's 8.3 percent.

"We believe that one of the important advantages of the wetting alarm diaper training method is that the child and the caregiver are immediately informed of leakage," Wyndaele said in a statement. "The alarm itself distracts the child out of his activity and strengthens the awareness of bladder behavior. By bringing the child to the bathroom at that moment, further reinforcement of its awareness is given."