A small light against the dark

A child who fears the dark has an imagination that finally works properly. The dark is where anyone cannot see, so it is where anything could be. The fear is proof the mind is developing, which is cold comfort at nine in the evening when nobody is sleeping.

The first thing that helps is taking it seriously. A monster under the bed is not silly from inside the bed. Checking under it together, once and thoroughly, does more than any sentence about there being nothing to fear. Children are calmed by what is done, not by what is said.

The second is a light they control. A small lamp by the bed, switched on and off by the child, turns the dark into a room with a setting. The fear loses its shape when the child holds the switch.

The third is the story before the light goes down. Children rehearse the night through what they hear. A story where the dark is a meadow with fireflies in it, where a fox walks beside a small lantern that will not go out, gives the imagination somewhere better to work than under the bed. The dark becomes the place the story happens, and the child has already been there and come home.

Stories where the light defeats the dark miss the point. The child does not need the dark beaten. They need to be shown the dark is habitable, that it has a fox in it and a path home. Then the light can go down and stay down.