No Night Lights for Kids Under Two, and Creative Nights for There After

Night lights are useful both to you (no more stubbing you toes on toys in the middle of the night) and to your child who will find comfort and security in a faint light. Traditional night lights can be purchased. They generally are tiny little Christmas light looking things with colorful happy shields that plug into electric outlets, but what's the fun in that? Here are two creative night light ideas for kids.

Lava Lamps:

Lava lamps let off low light and produce colorful shapes and designs. In younger kids they are a groovy way to help teach shapes and color in this manner, however be sure to place them where your child can't touch the night light. Lava lamps can get hot.

Fish Tanks:

Babies especially love watching fish swim, and as they age fish teach responsibility and a respect and love for nature. You can also consider an aquatic garden if you don't want to be cleaning fish poop out of your night light. Water lilies will swallow a whole tank and smell amazing.Plant's also make a wonderful first pet for kids.

No Night Lights for Kids under 2:

However new studies show kids under the age of two should not have night lights, so if that fish tank is for a baby, keep it out of the nursery.

Why not?

Low levels of light still penetrate the eyelids at night which keeps the eye from resting. A study preformed at the University of Pennsylvania Medical center tested 479 children and found that 55% who had slept in room with light before the age of two suffered from near sightedness, or myopia before the age of 16, and 34% were myopic who slept in a room with a night light alone. While only 10% of the same size group of kids who slept without a nightlight suffered from the same eyesight issue.

Though Dr. Richard Stone of the University says, "The study does not establish that nighttime lighting during early childhood is a direct cause of myopia, and there are undoubtedly other risk factors", the study is enough, at least for this mother, to remove artificial lights from my child's bed room until after the age of two.

The study also suggests that urban parent's are at yet another disadvantage. 25% of our populace is now near sighted. Researchers feel this may be a direct effect of ambient lighting from cities. What can you do? Try dark curtains in your child's room in you live in the city. You can even make the curtain felt, get Velcro puppets and turn the gaudy dark curtain into a play theater for your child.

So Lava lamps and fish tamps will make wonderful night lights for kids over the age of two, but before that, you might want to skip it all together. Stubbed toes beat blind eyes every time, or is it blind eyes cause stubbed toes?