4.5 insisting on light on at night, but not sleeping well

[time4tea]

my older boy is four and a half, he has been saying he is scared of the dark and asks for the light to be on. we have a light on a dimmer switch and he insists on having it bright when he settles down. once asleep we turn it down to its lowest setting. however he often seems tired during the day, and will have a nap in the afternoon/be grumpy. obviously we don't want him to be scared, and don't want to just put the light off, but how can we start dealing with this?

any tips from experience?

how about giving him a torch so that he can turn it on when/if he is scared?

Get some of those night lights which you plug into the wall - we got them for ds1 when he was about 4 and he still uses them now every night and he is 5.5.

erm no but i have exactly the same problem exactly the same age but with a girl. so will watch this thread. i have tried the torch thing it doesnt work on dd as she leaves it on all night then screams blue murder when the batteries run out.

if we turn off the light when she is asleep she will scream inconsolably if she wakes up so its not worth it. we also have to leave the bathroom light incase she needs the loo during the night.

Its the sign of a good imagination which is great.

My DS then 3 went through a bad phase of this last year. I brought him a bed tent. Its a smaller cosier space with less shadows and made him more secure in bed and happier to settle down. He has a wind up led torch so he doesn't have a battery issue and has a small in plug night light so its not pitch black. I keep the bathroom light on so when he opens his room door (shared with his younger brother) its not pitch black.

Why can't you leave the light on?

We leave the landing light on and the bedroom door ajar, so it's not pitch black in the bedroom, but is dark enough to sleep and they can also see the way to the bathroom. DS1 is the worst for it and he's 7.

Have changed the landing light-bulbs to 40watt low energy equivalent, so light is very dim anyway.

I would prefer not to TBH, but suspect the only answer is a few nights of screaming, like controlled crying, and I'm not about to do that.

You'd do screaming and crying over just leaving the light on? Why?

That's what I said Juuule I'm not about to do that

So you did. Apologies.

Does he wake up in the night? My ds (4 1/2) has his door wide open and the landing light on till we turn it out when we go to bed.

He doesn't usually wake up in the night, but the first time he did the only thing on hand was a mood cube dh got in a raffle a few Christmases ago, worked a treat, so that gets turned on on the rare occasions he wakes up and expresses concern at the dark... rather than bad dreams where we make sure he has big cuddly toys that will protect him!

Same thing happend with DD when she was about 31/2. We used a plug in night light and its worked. Just enough light so they arent afraid of the dark but not bright enough to disturb her sleep. Still use it now.

great thanks, am glad to see lots of tips from experience. thanks especially for the nice words about it being a good sign because it shows imagination I've offered him a torch tonight, he had a lot of fun flashing it about and making shadows everywhere. i told him he could have it all night in next to his drink and if he woke up and didn't like the dark he could put it on. will have landing light on anyway so not completely dark

i remember having the landing light on all night myself and the door ajar. so sympathise. but really needed to be sure it wasn't disturbing his sleep, even though on dimmer switch it wasn't as low light as I'd like...

thanks again

T4T