DD, 2.8, suddenly scared of the dark - night light/hall Light - what (if anything) do you do?

[lovecat]

At 2.8, dd has suddenly become scared of the dark, literally in the last week. She's been a Gina Ford baby inasmuch as she's always gone to sleep quite happily in a dark room with a blackout blind, but now is screaming hysterically if we leave her in the dark.

The OH's solution has been to leave her light on til she falls asleep, which seems to be working - she plays a bit organising her teddies and then conks out, whereupon we pop back up and turn the light off.

In the past, on a workday we'd get up at 6, shower etc and get her up at 7am. In reality she tends to wake about 6.15-6.30am ish, but could always be soothed back to sleep with a 'look, it's still dark, back to bed', whereupon she'd doze off for another half hour.

Now, however, she's waking up screaming at about 6.15am because of the dark, and won't go back to sleep because she 'doesn't like the dark'. This morning I've left the hall light on and the door ajar and she seems to be relatively happy (hasn't gone back to sleep, but is staying in bed so we can get showered etc without too much worry). She won't get out of bed unless we come for her (not sure why, not looking forward to that next part of potty training!) so at least we know she's there while we get ready for work, iykwim.

As we really don't want her to get distressed over this and certainly don't want the poor little thing to wake up screaming in fear, I was just wondering what MNers who have this to contend with do - do we do as my parents did and leave her door ajar and the hall light on all night? The OH is one for sleeping in total darkness and claims he can't get to sleep if there's any light, so I was wondering if nightlights are worth it? I was looking at those bunny/puppy/panda ones in the Blooming Marvellous catalogue...

If anyone's got any advice, that would be wonderful!

We've had a night light for dd1 (4.5yrs) since she was about 2. She was waking and crying that she couldn't see, didn't like to dark etc. Now, she's fine and even if she wakes in the night, the fact that there's a light on doesn't affect her going back to sleep.
We've had all sorts of lights from the ones that automatically come on in the dark to little ones that barely glow (too dark still!). She's currently got a light from Ikea which glows different colours.

We had the same. Bought night lights (plug in ones readily available in most lighting departments of Department stores), and we also leave his door open with landing light on

Thanks very much for that - will go and suss out nightlights now!

dd has a light from Homebase where you pat the base and it comes on at different levels of light i.e. 1 pat - low light level, 2 pats - medium level, 3 pats - full level of light. We leave it on the lowest setting at night. She does have a plug in night light but it doesnt give off much light so she sleeps better with the other light on too..