the good nite lite | family | life | friends, family + laughter

The Good Nite Lite was featured in Parenting magazine over a year ago. Instantly, I had to have it. It was still in manufacturing but I was able to get on a waiting list and my order was finalized only a few months later. We went through two trials of a “big girl bed” last year and we didn’t follow it through because, besides the decision to stay in her bed, she didn’t know when she could get up.

I have been content for her to stay in a crib longer than most of her friends since I have known kids up to 3 1/2 - 4 years to be in a crib. However, now, she is climbing out of her crib completely and, for her safety, we will be converting her bed to a toddler bed for the last time.

Because we haven’t started working on time-telling, I broke out the Good Nite Lite and have used it for three nights so far. My daughter has not gotten out of bed before morning! I am so relieved. I was expecting several restless nights of walking my sleepy girl back to her bed at least 100 times. To my surprise, I didn’t have to do it once!

In their own words:
The Good Nite Lite is a patent pending, behavioral modification device designed to promote a child’s ability to get the rest that is critical for healthy development.

If a child is in the habit of waking up at a certain time, they will tend to continue this regular pattern until it is reset. Unfortunately, if the established pattern is to wake up too early, the result is a that a child will become active on their own schedule which interferes with their own healthy sleep pattern and can be a disruptive influence to the entire household particularly Mom and Dad! It can be extremely difficult to modify this pattern without a visual cue that can be easily understood by even very young children. The Good Nite Lite provides exactly this behavioral cue with its easily distinguished display of the Moon, meaning, “time to rest” and Sun display meaning “time to get up!”.

Rest is one of the most important requirements for development and learning and a well-rested child is normally happier and better behaved than those that may be sleep deprived. To encourage the appropriate sleep pattern, the Good Nite Lite can gradually be set to longer and longer sleep periods until the child is getting the full nights rest required.

When you add in the fact that the parents also get additional rest, this becomes a positive experience for the whole family!

night light

My daughter sleeps best when her room is dark. My parents would say that I’m creating a darkness-dependent adult. To that, I tell them (and myself) that she’ll be grown by then and have good sleep habits so, I have done my job.

The Good Nite Lite is designed to have a moon glow that dims an hour after bed time in order to show a child they are to stay in bed and go back to sleep. That little bit of light disturbs my little girl because she has never had a night light. So, I’ve discovered that I can set the night timer to one minute before the morning timer and then, we don’t have to use the dim night light but we still have the benefit of the morning wake up!

Now, if I could have my cake and eat it too, I would use the morning wake-up setting to train my daughter to wake up a little later - say, around 6:45 or 7am instead of 6:15. I’ll let you know how that goes!

Check out their website to see all of the awesome press this sleep tool has received.