Comfortable sleep in fearless darkness: the right night light in the nursery

One of the most com­mon child­hood fears is the fear of the dark. Because of her, chil­dren may not like the moment of going to bed, be afraid to stay in the nurs­ery with­out their par­ents and ask to be in bed with them.

Even very small, new­ly born babies should leave a small source of light in the room. This will allow you not to turn on the main, bright lamp, if you just need to check how the child sleeps or change the dia­per.

A night light for a nurs­ery solves these prob­lems. And advice from Med­AbouMe will help with the choice.

Night terrors and phobia of the dark: a note to parents

The child has a rich imag­i­na­tion and a vivid per­cep­tion of the world. The shad­ow on the wall instant­ly turns into Bar­ma­ley, and in the dark­ness behind the clos­et, no doubt, some­thing fright­en­ing lives. And the child may well car­ry this anx­i­ety into adult­hood.

Fears and pho­bias can arise at such an ear­ly age that the child him­self will not be able to remem­ber lat­er why goose­bumps run down his back in the dark, and every shad­ow seems dan­ger­ous.

There are, of course, chil­dren who are not at all afraid of the dark, but even they are more com­fort­able sleep­ing with dimmed lights. Because sud­den­ly you need to get up at night to go for a drink, or go to the toi­let. Who likes to grope in the dark?

Per­son­al expe­ri­ence

Eka­te­ri­na, 58 years old

I was always afraid of the dark, thanks to the grand­moth­ers who told scary sto­ries at night and gen­er­al­ly liked to intim­i­date their grand­chil­dren for some rea­son. Now they will tell about the kikimo­ra in a ter­ri­ble whis­per, then about how the old miller dug him­self out of the grave and walked around the vil­lage at night. “And if any­one meets him, but looks into his face, he will cer­tain­ly die soon!” But the worst thing that hap­pened was that I was some­times sent to a dark clos­et for some­thing that was stored there. The switch was far from the door, and it had the prop­er­ty of slam­ming shut, and sev­er­al steps had to be tak­en in total dark­ness. It was the worst thing that I had to endure as a child vis­it­ing my grand­moth­er. Because there is always some­thing rustling in the dark cor­ners. It was after that that I was ter­ri­bly afraid to sleep in the nurs­ery if my moth­er closed the door tight­ly and the room became com­plete­ly dark. We did­n’t have a night­light.

The younger sis­ter, unlike me, was nev­er afraid of any­thing but injec­tions. No dark­ness, no frogs, no snakes, no grand­moth­er’s tales. Even today she feels com­plete­ly com­fort­able in the dark, even in the house, even on the street, even in the for­est. And I still leave the night­light on at night. And to my grand­chil­dren too.

Nightlights for children: safety and ease of use

One of the main require­ments for light­ing devices in a chil­dren’s room is their safe­ty. Under no cir­cum­stances should a child be exposed to the risk of elec­tric shock, entan­gle­ment in the wire or trip­ping over it.

The night light should not break with the for­ma­tion of sharp frag­ments, crum­ble into pieces, release harm­ful sub­stances when heat­ed.

For the youngest chil­dren, it is sug­gest­ed to use bat­tery-pow­ered night­lights that are attached direct­ly to the crib or in close prox­im­i­ty to it. But when the child learns to get up, the night light will have to be changed to a more inac­ces­si­ble one.

For exam­ple, on a lamp that is insert­ed direct­ly into a sock­et. They can be made in the form of toys, flow­ers, hous­es or fairy-tale char­ac­ters. As a rule, the light source is hid­den behind a mat­te translu­cent body and gives soft illu­mi­na­tion. But for the use of such night­lights, sock­ets must be locat­ed high enough so that the child can­not reach.

Night light ERA NN-605-LS‑W

The night light is made in the form of a cozy cloud. It is insert­ed direct­ly into the sock­et, turns on auto­mat­i­cal­ly, as it is equipped with a light sen­sor. Inex­pen­sive and prac­ti­cal mod­el.

LED night light FN1156

Designed specif­i­cal­ly for use in chil­dren’s rooms. Does not heat up, con­sumes lit­tle ener­gy, turns on auto­mat­i­cal­ly when the light lev­el decreas­es.

Con­ve­nient to use table lamps with adjustable light­ing lev­el, capa­ble of work­ing as a night light. They can also have an alarm clock, pro­jec­tor, etc. built in. Such a night light is suit­able for old­er chil­dren.

Table night light Bradex DE 0070 “Medusa”

Made from spe­cial unbreak­able plas­tic. On 4 legs there are suc­tion cups for a more secure fix­ing of the lamp on the table.

Chil­dren’s night light NIGHT LIGHT 357424

The table night light is bat­tery oper­at­ed, dec­o­rat­ing the inte­ri­or and dis­pelling the dark­ness of the night with soft light.

Night light Zazu Lamb Fin (Fin)

Nice table lamp has two modes: bright light for read­ing and soft night illu­mi­na­tion for falling asleep. The night light will auto­mat­i­cal­ly turn off after 1 hour of oper­a­tion.

Light in the child’s room: toy, projector, salt lamp

For the small­est, night­lights built into the mobile are often cho­sen. Dur­ing the day, the baby looks at the spin­ning fig­ures, and at night, a night light is turned on at the base of the mobile with a soft light that does not irri­tate the baby. It will not inter­fere with sleep, but in order to change a dia­per or feed a baby, the light is enough.

Some bed­side lamps may have addi­tion­al func­tions built in: a motion or cry­ing sen­sor, for exam­ple.

Night light Tom­my “Sleep baby”

A musi­cal night light with a pro­jec­tor can be fixed on the baby’s bed. Pow­ered by a bat­tery in two modes, falling asleep and wak­ing up

Musi­cal pro­jec­tor-night light “Umka”

Hangs on the bed. Can play 7 lul­la­bies. It glows soft­ly, sooth­ing the baby with the pro­jec­tion of stars on the ceil­ing of the room.

For old­er chil­dren, night­lights with a built-in pro­jec­tor are great. The lumi­nous ele­ment can be placed in the body of the toy, and addi­tion­al replace­ment car­tridges are attached to the pro­jec­tor or you can pur­chase addi­tion­al replace­ment car­tridges. It’s much more inter­est­ing when stars move along the ceil­ing, they can be replaced by fish or dol­phins, and those by fairy-tale char­ac­ters.

Sum­mer Infant “Lady­bug”

The night light, which you can also play with, not only turns the ceil­ing into a star­ry sky. Lady­bug can also play lul­la­bies and repro­duce the sooth­ing sounds of nature.

Night light-pro­jec­tor BRADEX Star tur­tle

A bat­tery-oper­at­ed night light pro­jec­tor that illu­mi­nates bright mul­ti-col­ored stars on the ceil­ing.

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Salt lamps, wide­ly adver­tised on the Inter­net and in the media, deserve spe­cial atten­tion.

They con­sist of pieces of rock salt and a lamp that also serves as a heat­ing ele­ment. Some­times it’s just a big lump of salt — pink Himalayan, black or oth­er. A recess is made in the salt crys­tal, in which a light bulb is placed. When turned on, the light breaks through the translu­cent walls of the crys­tal, giv­ing a soft illu­mi­na­tion. In oth­er mod­els, the body is made of ceram­ic, and large salt crys­tals are poured inside and sur­round the light bulb.

Man­u­fac­tur­ers claim that under the influ­ence of heat, salt releas­es neg­a­tive­ly charged ions that puri­fy the air in the room from dust, have a ben­e­fi­cial effect on the lungs and the entire body, strength­en­ing the immune sys­tem and help­ing to main­tain or restore health.

In fact, there is no sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence for this. And pink, and black, and any oth­er salt can emit only sodi­um and chlo­rine ions, since in com­po­si­tion, in gen­er­al, it does not dif­fer from ordi­nary table salt. But with slight heat­ing, these ions are not formed much, since sodi­um chlo­ride is a sta­ble com­pound.

If par­ents still want to get a salt lamp, they can choose a reg­u­lar, dis­creet design mod­el, or a spe­cial chil­dren’s night light, made in the form of a fun­ny fig­ure.

Salt lamp “Owl”

Himalayan salt crys­tals are suc­cess­ful­ly com­bined with the ceram­ic body of the lamp.

Salt lamp “Star”

Made from pink Pak­istani rock salt. Heat­ing and glow is pro­vid­ed by a con­ven­tion­al incan­des­cent lamp with a pow­er of 10–15 watts.

Expert com­ment

John Malin, chemist, mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety

For the man­u­fac­ture of salt lamps, halite is used — a min­er­al that, in fact, is the very salt that we use in the kitchen to add salt to dish­es. This is a sta­ble com­pound, and with a slight heat­ing, the release of a sig­nif­i­cant amount of neg­a­tive ions does not occur. Of course, salt is able to absorb water vapor from the air, and part of the mois­ture can con­tribute to the dis­so­ci­a­tion of sodi­um chlo­ride with the for­ma­tion of sodi­um and chlo­ride ions. But as the salt sur­face dries, the ions tend to recom­bine imme­di­ate­ly, so that no neg­a­tive ions are released into the room air.

Heat­ed salt is also unlike­ly to puri­fy the air. Some pol­lut­ing par­ti­cles can ran­dom­ly fall on the sur­face of a warm crys­tal and stick to the mois­ture that has set­tled on it, but it makes no sense to talk about some kind of fil­tra­tion and purifi­ca­tion.

Stud­ies con­duct­ed sev­er­al years ago did not con­firm the pos­i­tive effect of neg­a­tive air ion­iza­tion on sleep qual­i­ty, anx­i­ety reduc­tion or human mood. The max­i­mum that was pos­si­ble to record was a slight improve­ment in the con­di­tion of those suf­fer­ing from depres­sion and sea­son­al affec­tive dis­or­der.

But as a harm­less source of cozy light, these lamps can be used in the chil­dren’s room, and in any oth­er premis­es.