I am going to start of by saying I am not a parent and that I do not plan on becoming one for a long time. Having said that when I see someone parenting there kid in a public place I can't help but think how I would parent my own spawn.
Children are born Tabula-rasa, which effecivly means blank slate. They have no concept of right or wrong, good or evil. All though for some reason a lot of kids go on to become afraid of the dark. It occurred to me that kids actually have to learn to be afraid of the dark, it is not something that comes naturally. In any case I do not plan on ever providing my kids with night lights because in my mind that just propagates the fear of darkness. Besides in the future power is going to be to expensive to run a night light.
So fellow users who are parents or potential parents what plans for your kids do you have? What are you going to do differently that you think is going to benefit them?
We're not as familiar with it as we are with light. Most people sleep during the night, when it's dark, so they don't know what's going on. It's also slightly colder during the night. The dark is usually associated with evil in most popular fictions, Batman being one of the rare exclusions from that. In fiction extraterrestrials usually come at night, monsters usually come at night, ...
Basically, humans usually fear the dark out of xenophobia.
As for night light replacement: why not use fluorescent things? Or an alarm clock, an alarm clock's light also provides a good amount of ambient light, you just need a while to notice the effects (natural night vision).
So fellow users who are parents or potential parents what plans for your kids do you have? What are you going to do differently that you think is going to benefit them?
My kids aren't going to be afraid of werewolves because every full moon I will maul them dressed as a werewolf so they get use to the idea and aren't afraid of it any more.
I am just saying there is nothing to be afraid of in the dark, and I think that to a kid putting a night light in there room is like saying "there are things in the dark so we will give you this light to keep them away."
Yeah, but there are absolutely things to be afraid of in the dark. The shit you can't see. You're kid's clever enough to figure that out. If you're lucky.
What is in the dark thats not there in the light? And if it is that scary how is having a 20 watt light bulb going to help. If it is an axe murderer all that night-light it is going to help is your both going to see each other better as they kill you/your kid
You gotta think like a kid. Somewhere along the way in his life he's going to pick up the idea of monsters, and he's going to pick up the idea that bad things wait in the dark. Hell, maybe you don't learn it, maybe your born with it, but either way odds are he's gonna have it. It doesn't matter if it's logical or not, to his imaginative or stupid or whatever the hell mind, it makes sense. Bad things are in the dark, light means I can see them and they won't get me.
You can supply comforting words all you want about how there is no danger, or if there is danger light one help (that's a great one there, I really encourage you go with that one) but he's never going to really believe you. So maybe it's better to supply the kid with the small comfort of a dim bulb so he'll stop wetting the bed since he's to afraid of the monster in the closet to get out of it.
I agree that kids sometimes go against logical thinking. They have active imaginations and this makes them imperveous to reasonable words. There going to develope fears of things that are not there even if you tell them there is nothing there. A night-light is a temporary solution to the problem of them being afraid of things in the dark. If you do you give your kid a night light you are eventually going to have to take away the night light away and they are going to have to learn to cope with darkness anyway. That or you can have a 15 year old that still sleeps with a night-light. So I can give them a night light and than at some point take it away or I can choose to never give them one at all. Plus I do my job right my child should never want a night light because they will never know what it is.
I wish my parents had done this to me. As a child I was terrified of the dark and to this day I get uneasy on occasion when the lights are out. TrueMischief, I hope you do follow through with this, I think i will as well.
I have 3 dogs, so the only thing that scares me about the dark is stepping on a dog bone. That's quite a painful surprise....
On a more serious note, I do recall being afraid of the dark for the same stupid reasons. Looking back, it's makes much more sense that if there IS something that would scare me (for instance at the time a bat or creepy spider or whatever) I would probably rather not know it is there.
If you want to save on power, and not have your childrens afraid of the dark, just buy them each a torch to sit beside their bed/under their pillow, that way they can "Scare off" any "monsters" with light when they get scared, and will eventually get over their fear of the dark...
Or get glow-in-the-dark paint for every room in your house! XD
I think it’s generally the imagination that makes them scared, and that’s something you can’t stop. They will pick things up from films, fairy tales, & even their friends. I have a 3 year old who doesn’t like the dark, and she’s never had a night light but we read her kids books and she watch’s films and, really, how many disney films have a dark scary monster? All kids films usually have something scary there and it’s always in a dark castle or room or somewhere at night. They begin to associate the dark with scary things and you can’t stop them watching films & having books.
Plus, if you have a child in a nursery at night asleep, who then wakes up alone & hungry, its going to be scared and crying and it will hate the dark. It’s not something you can ever stop, just something you can try to deal with as best you can.
Really, its not that big a deal. Are you going take them on the roof daily to stop a fear of heights, or make them play with spiders?
Kids sometimes go against logical thinking? No, they always go against logical thinking. You can’t plan anything like that, and as much as you might want to try, you can almost never predict what your kids will do or will be afraid of. My son, for instance, is afraid of balloons. Absolutely terrified of them. He has never had one pop in his face, just one day we were out, got him one and you would have thought it was trying to eat him. He had them before fine, but one day he nearly jumped out my arms trying to get away & hasn’t liked them since.
Personally, i hated the dark as a child, but now i get the best nights sleep when its pitch black.
Are you going take them on the roof daily to stop a fear of heights, or make them play with spiders?
No I don't plan to but a night light is more comparable to building a safety net around your whole house but having it made of cheese, so when you took your kids on the roof they had a tool there that made them feel safe but if anything where to really go wrong it would have no use.
No night light and they will have to learn to cope with darkness. It sounds harsh but also effective I think
Fear of the unknown is the basis of being afraid of the dark, and it's an evolved trait. An individual that fears what he cannot see or otherwise sense is one that will take steps to percieve it. Over long periods of time, those unafraid of the unknown tend to be "pruned" evolutionarily, and their genes are not passed on. Fear of the unknown, and in turn fear of the dark, is not a learned trait like many other fears, it's an instinct evolved from thousands of years of human experience.
Beyond that, it's difficult to train children against common fears, or at least it's difficult to prevent them from forming. Fear of wolves and other large dog-like creatures often is learned not by an actual experience, but their common use as a natural antagonist in children's shows or folk tales. Fear of MONSTERS in the dark is typically learned from other children or older children who tell monster stories to scare the younger ones. Fear of spiders is often derived from others' fear of spiders. These are all fears and behaviours that can be extincted either via flooding or gradual exposure, but they're very difficult to avoid entirely.
If you're trying to flood your child with darkness in an attempt to extinct the behaviour of fearing it, you'll likely meet very little success in the short term. As I saw mentioned earlier, the imagination of a child works like mad in a dark setting, as there could be anything there, out of sight, and again, fear of specific darkness-related things like monsters develops extremely easily via interacitons with other children. In the long term, and as the child matures they should start losing their fears of the dark, as well as their fears of irrational things like monsters, but it won't yield short term results.
With all that said, why would you WANT your child to not fear the dark? Are you training Batman? Fear of the dark is functionally beneficial to children, especially as they're still gaining motor skills. A clumsy child unafraid of the dark runs a serious risk of injury from things as simple as running head-first into a desk to things as serious as falling down a flight of stairs. As time goes on, the fear of sleeping in the dark tends to naturally fade, and by that time people have usually learned to respect the dangers of running around in the darkness. Is there a specific reason you want your child to be unafraid of things they can't see?
How do you expect to stop a childs imagination? Its that which makes them afraid. Monsters in the cuboard or under the bed. At night, with whatever light is in the room, moonlight or street lamps, things become distorted & to you or me, its picture on the wall or a teddy bear but to a child it is the scariest thing in the world. Kids do not have the reasoning capeability to say, oh wait its just a teddy, its just a toy car or even just a shadow. Anyway, because its the imagination running wild, its healthy in a way because it shows the child is developing a really good imagination!
As kids get older, they should grow out of it and there won't be a problem. I don't think anyone can completly stop their child developing a fear of the dark, especially by simply not getting a nightlight. Kids are never that simple.
Im not gonna hit you guys with a wall of text...im just gonna say if you REALLY wanna make them fearless just toss em in pitch black room with a very large terrifying animal and come back for them maybe 2 hours later. Just do what the Spartans did.
That's actually not at all the same. Flooding only works if nothing bad happens. The Spartans (ala 300) sent their young boys into the wilderness to toughen them up and to teach them to conquer their fears. The other option was death. Assuming the "very large, terrifying animal" doesn't kill the child in the room, they'll become far more afraid of the dark, as it genuinely presented a threat to them. Flooding really only works if you present someone with the pinnacle of their fear and nothing goes bad. If you present the kid with the pinnacle of their fear and they get, say, mauled by a cougar, they'll never set foot in a dark room again.
Even if it is a pre-programed instinct to be afraid of the dark you can "over ride" or cancel out pre-written instincts. And it has nothing to do with comprehension of the subject. You could "train" a child to not be afraid of the dark the same way you train a kid to use the toilet.
In reply to snake83, #20: I don not have to stop my child's imagination in any way. Regardless of nature vs. nurture a child can learn quickly and effectively not to be afraid of the dark. It is all about conditioning.
You might recall that I mention that yes, the fear can be extincted, but in the case of something so instinctual like this, it's very difficult, especially given the wide variability of a child's life.
Also, as a note on your conditioning notion in this last post, you're heavily overestimating the ability to control a child's mind in a way effective enough to properly condition against a fear so present in their everyday lives. A single slip up, be it your son falling down in the dark and hurting his knee or a scary ghost story told around a campfire, will actually INCREASE his fear of the dark, as it's a confirmation, at least in his mind, of the rationality of his fear.
Again, I've got to ask WHY you'd want to remove the child's fear of the dark. It's natural, it happens to almost everyone, and it's functional. The chances of your child never outgrowing it is infintesimally small in comparison to the chance that your child could hurt himself. I just don't see the advantage.
a very big well exectued touche...and while you have said the very blatant solution to the problem (no kids haha) i still wanna see what happens when a child and a tiger are in a pitch black room.....
i always thought a fear of the dark was provoked simply because it renders one of your main sensory organs near useless. and refusing to buy a night-light may further increase their fear, or worst case, they never grow out of it.
In reply to LBCountry, #26: I think you don't understand the power of conditioning.
In reply to The_Sloth, #29: I agree that just exposing a kid to darkness could do the opposite of the desired effect. Using a simple system of rewards for for "good" behavior you can extinguish there fear of darkness, or even stop it from developing
