How to Make Someone Wet the Bed

Last Updated: July 25, 2022

Perhaps the most iconic of sleepover pranks, tricking your snoozing friends into peeing themselves has an obvious appeal. First, your friend just peed themselves (what’s not to enjoy here) and second, it feels basically like you cast a magic spell on them. While its credibility is suspect and there’s a possibility it won’t have the intended effect, it works often enough that you may as well find out for yourself…. ^{[1]
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Part 1

Part 1 of 2:

Preparing to Prank

1
Drink plenty of liquids before bed. This prank definitely won’t work if your prankee goes to bed with an empty bladder. To avoid suspicion, you should offer plenty of soda, water, tea, or juice to everyone at the sleepover throughout the night (not just the person you’re looking to prank), and drink plenty yourself.
- When you need to use the bathroom, make an excuse or sneak away when possible, to avoid putting the idea of using the bathroom in anybody else’s mind.
- Other snacks with high water content, like yogurt and soup, are great choices as well. Watermelon is particularly saturated in it (as its name might imply) so supplying everyone with watermelon slices before bed is a low-key method to enable your mischief. ^{[2]
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2
Stay up late. If a particularly early bedtime has been set, it can be difficult to tell if your bunkmates are asleep or just lying there wide awake with their eyes shut. Stay up late, if possible, so that friends only fall asleep when they’re obviously tired (sometimes right in their seat, while still holding their Nintendo controller).
3
Keep the target (the “prankee”) occupied. Tired friends who are entertained (such as by a movie or game) are less likely to use the bathroom before they fall asleep, ensuring they’ll go to sleep with plenty of liquids in them.
- Take care not to overplay your hand. Too much attention focused on how much a particular friend is drinking, or repeatedly stopping them from using the bathroom can give you away.
- If you don’t want to single any one person out beforehand, playing games with the group so that everyone is suitably occupied is a viable tactic.
4
Ensure the prankee is asleep. This only has a chance of working if the intended target is actually sleeping. Listen for telltale snores, or look for a slack, open mouth. Quietly call their name if you’re unsure.

Part 2

Part 2 of 2:

Dipping the Sleeper’s Hand in Warm Water

1
Fill up a bowl with warm water. A plastic bowl is better than a cup, since it has more room for the hand, and being plastic means it won’t be cracked if it’s knocked over. You don’t want your parents (or your friend’s parents) bringing you down after a successful prank because you used a nice ceramic bowl, and the prankee jolted awake and cracked the bowl.
- Although it’s a bit of speculation (as the efficacy of this prank is disputable), if this prank works it’s likely through the power of suggestion. The same mechanism is what can make us want to pee when we hear running water. ^{[3]
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- The water must be warm, but it should never be hot. Hot water could burn your friend.
2
Bring the warm water quietly into the room. Even if you don’t wake the victim, you always run the risk of waking someone else who would witness your part in this prank. Only you can determine whether this is an issue or not, as it depends only on how secretive you’re aiming to be.
3
Clear the splash zone. It’s highly likely for the prankee to knock the bowl over, intentionally or not, so you don’t want anything to get ruined if this happens. Delicately move everything you’d mind getting soggy out of the vicinity (a five-foot radius around the sleeper should be safe), taking special care to ensure all electronics are out of the way.
4
Place the sleeper’s hand into the water. You must contend now with the position your prankee has fallen asleep in. There are any number of possible arm placements; calmly assess the situation to find the easiest way to get their hand into the water.
- If their hand is dangling from a bed, you might be able to slide the bowl right underneath it.
- If it’s hanging slack from a bunk bed or over the arm of a sofa, you might need to stack some books underneath the bowl to reach their hand, or place the bowl onto a stool.
- If it’s not dangling, take care! Be very gentle as you aim to reposition their hand and arm so that it can drape into the bowl. Take a position that will allow you to feign sleep (or quickly hide) if they awake.
- If it’s under their head or body, you’re probably not going to succeed in moving it. Bide your time, or find a new person to prank.
5
Feign sleep. It would probably be wise to hop back into bed at this point, and pretend you played no part in what’s about to unfold. If questioned, why, you were in bed the whole time!
6
Keep the secret. Part of the fun with this prank is everybody's uncertainty about whether or not it will even work. Keeping the success or failure of your quest to achieve bed-wettage a secret helps to maintain that aura of mystery, so don't spread the word!
- Keeping quiet also avoids shaming or bullying the prankee afterward, which is important. Bullying goes against the spirit of pranking, and is never acceptable.

Community Q&A

Question

Does the water need to be hot?

Community Answer

Cold water will not work. Warm water is fine. If the water is too hot, it could burn the person or wake him/her up.
Question

Does this actually make a person wet himself, or is it just his wet hand touching his bits?

Community Answer

It should cause a person to wet himself, as it's a natural reaction to having his hand in warm water.
Question

I heard you're supposed to put both hands in warm water. Is this true or will just one work?

Community Answer

You can do both, but just one should work. Doing both has a higher chance of waking the victim up, so it's preferred to do just one.