Night lights play an important role in ensuring your baby's sleep. The night light helps babies to be less afraid of the dark and helps parents to easily change diapers, cover up with blankets or breastfeed at night.
However, parents need to be very careful in choosing a night light for their babies. According to experts, when the night light is too high or left on for too long, it can affect the baby's eyes, sleep and overall development.
Therefore, this article will help parents get knowledge about using night light while sleep training and give several notices when choosing night lights for babies.
Using Night Light While Sleep Training: Pros and Cons
First, parents need to understand the benefits and limitations of a night light to decide whether to buy a night light for their baby or not.
Pros
Cons
At What Age Do Kids Sleep With Night Light?
When the child is about 2 years old or more, parents can leave the night light with the appropriate light intensity to help the child be less afraid of the dark and sleep peacefully. It's not recommended to leave night light for children under 2 years old because it can potentially affect their sleep and development.
For babies, the growth rate in the first 6 months is very fast. After the baby goes to sleep, the body will secrete melatonin, which can make the child have better sleep quality and avoid damaging the baby's body cells.
However, during this period, turning on the night light regularly can reduce the secretion of melatonin and growth hormone of the child, affecting the physical development of the child. Therefore, at about the first 6-12 months, parents should limit the use of night lights for children.
What color night light helps baby sleep?
According to CDC, color of night light have impact on your circadian rhythm.
Firstly, do not choose a night light with too many colors. The models of night lights that are mixed with too many colors and have high contrast will make the room uncomfortable, adversely affect the sleep, and eyesight of the child.
Parents should only choose lights with gentle, subtle monochrome colors to make the child's growing environment healthy and pleasant.
In addition, according to experts, parents should not choose night lights with cold tones such as white or blue light because they have the ability to inhibit Melatonin Hormone, making children unable to sleep. These lights will penetrate directly through the eyelid membrane, shining on the lens, causing the child's eyes to be adversely affected.
Parents should choose night lights for babies with dim, soft light, warm tones such as orange or pale yellow, especially those that can increase or decrease the light intensity and color so that the baby's vision is developed better.
Avoid lights with dark colors such as red, dark blue as they can make your baby sleep poorly and adversely affect the eyes of the child.
Besides, parents can consider the use of night lights with electric artificial light. Specifically, parents can make their own night lights from nature such as mineral salts, luminescent light, etc. These light rays are quite gentle, soothing the nerves. nerves to help your baby sleep better.
Experience for parents when choosing to buy a night light
When buying a night light for a baby, parents should carefully consider the following criteria:
Night light color
Only use night light with soft and dim color with warm tones such as orange or pale yellow.
Design of lights
Parents should choose night lights that are firm, not easy to fall and hurt the baby. The night light must be able to prevent direct light toward the baby.
Many mothers often choose lamps with an outer covering made of porcelain, glass or rubber.
Light switch
Parents should choose switches with built-in potentiometers that can increase or decrease the appropriate light level.
Bulb capacity
You should choose light bulbs with low wattage as they are dimer and better for your baby's sleep.
The best option today is a 3W -5W LED bulb, which not only emits soft light, saves electricity but is also very user-friendly and safe.
Good night light for children
LED lights are the top priority choice in protecting the health of children, because this type of light distributes light evenly, does not flicker, does not cause glare and eye pain, and keeps baby’s eyes healthy.
Besides, other advantages of LED lights such as high technology, modern, environmentally friendly, no ultraviolet rays and UV rays affecting baby's skin are also the reasons why LED lights are popular.
Using and turning off night light
Some notes when using a night light and leave a night light in the room that parents need to know:
Limit abuse of night lights
Parents should not expose children to constant night light because over time, the child will not adapt well to natural light, which will greatly affect the later personality formation process.
Parents should let the baby slowly get used to playing outside in natural light, only use the lights when the baby needs to go to sleep, and when they are fast asleep, turn off the lights.
Some notes when turning off the night light for baby's safety
Many mothers believe that, after the child goes into deep sleep, the lights will be turned off so as not to affect the child. However, turning off the lights must also be done properly, or the child will wake up. Here are some notes when parents intend to turn off the night light for their children:
Closing
Hopefully, our sharing above will help parents have an overview of sleep training night light, so that parents can use night lights for children properly, help children have a good night's sleep and develop more comprehensively.