Bladder Energy and Your Child

The bladder energy circuit is very closely tied to the kidney energy. This is not surprising as they are both integral parts of your child's urinary system.

Most of the topics discussed here are given with the understanding that this close relationship between the bladder and the kidneys means they should be taken together as a whole, not individual organs and channels operating independently.

The kidney and bladder circuits are in charge of many important functions in the growing child. It is definitely the most important for the nervous system, growth and development, the endocrine and immune systems, just to name a few.

I feel it is of paramount importance for you as a parent to be aware of these connections and correlations, because this is how your child's system is designed to work and how it functions from an energy perspective everyday of their lives.

From an energy perspective, everything is fluid and changeable, meaning your child's underlying energy system will seek to balance all of the energy components in real time.

For this section, we will focus in on the bladder energy subcircuit, but keep in mind there is not a distinct boundary between these organs and meridians. They are all part of one continuous energetic pathway within your child's system.

According to the Chinese medicine system, the following functions are correlated with your child's bladder energy circuit:

When a child presents with any or a combination of the above symptoms, how do we go about evaluating and making sense of their situation?

What I have learned is that this method of framing the set of symptoms in the context of the kidney and bladder energy and your child is a key differentiating factor.

The first thing I do is explore the historical influences a child may have had that relate to these two circuits or energy reservoirs.

We then add what might be happening in their current environment, school, home or family situation that could lead to certain settings or energy patterns.

Let's look at the common example of a child with a history of bedwetting. This is a distressing situation for both kids and their parents.

I am in favor of having a diagnostic evaluation done, including seeing medical specialists when needed. If there are physical problems or inherited disorders of the urinary tract then these should be treated right away.

However, in most cases, a child with bedwetting has no physical problems and often parents are told to just wait it out.

While this approach is understandable, I believe it does not give us the whole picture.

By using the very valuable information readily obtained through evaluating your child with a Chinese medicine or energy medicine perspective, we can find those contributing factors that may not be obvious and the treatment or focusing measures that will help accelerate the resolution of the bedwetting.

In many cases it is true that if you wait long enough, the child will "outgrow" bedwetting. However, I have yet to find a child or a parent who is willing to accept that approach without trying anything and everything to alleviate this persistent problem.

In my experience, some of the most common precursors to bedwetting are a history of having had immune system challenges like serious infections or severe allergies. These conditions require energy from your child's kidney and bladder energy circuits, both when they are actively occurring and in some cases for years afterwards.

Other situations that can take up more of a child's kidney and bladder energy are fearful or traumatic events like suffering from a bike or car accident, head injury, or even just having elective surgery for things like ear tubes and having tonsils taken out.

It is not that these events are causative in and of themselves, but it is the energy that is required by the child's system to deal with them in the moment and in the aftermath.

This is such a common situation in kids that I have incorporated asking these specific questions with every new patient I see in my practice.

The usefulness of this information and the fact that it can be correlated and given back to the child and family as part of a coherent energy explanation for bedwetting, makes this a key component of my strategy with kids and parents.

In many cases, when we describe what is happening with your child's energy system, the problem is not that your child's body does not know what to do. Rather, it is likely that the way your child's energy is distributed is skewed toward having too much energy in certain categories, and not enough in others.

For example, if your child had frequent and recurrent ear infections, along with surgical ear tube placement, tonsils out at age 4, and allergies to environmental and food sources after age 5; all of these require energy expenditures from their kidney and bladder subcircuits.

Therefore, in the context of what your child's system is trying to accomplish and maintain, the issue of bedwetting is from a priority perspective, the least important of the list.

Any intervention that can help your child's system rebalance and reprioritize itself is a step in the right direction, and this is where a modality like BodyTalk comes in very handy.

This is just one possible explanation, but what I have found is that when kids and their parents understand the logic behind what their body is trying to do, it is very helpful and lends itself to understanding and moving forward.

To reiterate, the energy medicine way of looking at your child's kidney and bladder energy evaluates the historical experiences that may be related to current symptoms, and recognizes that the body as a system is called upon to make energy distribution decisions based on priority and the need to maintain vital functions.

In addition, the ability to prevent or anticipate the possibility of new symptoms appearing in the future is something I want all parents to know is possible using this type of energy medicine approach.