FRIDAY, Jan. 24, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- Does your child scream in terror every time you turn the light off?
It may just be a common childhood fear, but if it persists or seems severe, it could be a sign your child has a rare condition called stationary night blindness.
When the lights go out, someone with stationary night blindness can't see anything. Their eyes never adjust to the darkness. In the Jan. 25 issue of the British Medical Journal, doctors from Garnavel General Hospital in Glasgow, Scotland, describe two different cases of stationary night blindness in toddlers.
"The children we saw could not get out of bed at night to come through to their parent's bedrooms because they were ostensibly blind when there was no lighting," says one of the study's authors, Dr. Gordon N. Dutton, a pediatric ophthalmologist at Garnavel General Hospital.
The first case is a 3-year-old girl with no apparent visual problems who had been scared of the dark since an early age. She told her parents she couldn't see when the bedroom lights were turned off, to which her parents responded, "Wait till your eyes adjust." However, the youngster persisted in her complaints until her parents turned the light back on. She also refused to go to the bathroom, which was down a dark hallway, during the night. It wasn't until the girl's younger sister was diagnosed with retinal problems that the parents had the older child's eyes tested.
The second case, involving a 2-year-old girl, is very similar. The girl was afraid of the dark and wouldn't venture into dark rooms. She also tripped and bumped into things frequently, though she also had no apparent visual problems.
Both girls were diagnosed with stationary night blindness. "It is an inherited condition in which the rods in the retina, which are responsible for adapting to and seeing in the dark, don't work or work imperfectly," explains Dutton.
He says the disorder is called stationary because it doesn't change throughout life.
The doctors prescribed intensity adjustable nightlights for the youngsters and suggested their parents provide them with flashlights for traveling down dark hallways or into dark bedrooms. Both girls' sleeping habits improved immediately.
Dutton says it's difficult to estimate how many people suffer from this condition because people who have it think they're normal. They don't realize that their eyes don't adjust to the darkness like everyone else's do.
"If children fall in the normal visual acuity range, they may not complain to their parents," says Dr. Marcelle Morcos, director of ophthalmology at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, N.Y. "They don't know they should see any differently in the dark."
She says she doesn't see many patients with stationary night blindness, but says parents should be on the lookout for signs of the disorder, especially if they have a history of eye problems in their family. She says to look for signs that the child isn't adapting well to the darkness. "Do they seem lost in a dark room?"
Dutton says if your child is consistently frightened of the dark and that fear immediately goes away when you give your child control of the lights (either with a nightlight, flashlight or room light), you might want to have their eyes checked. However, other than avoiding dark situations, there is no treatment for stationary night blindness.
More information
Here's some information about more common eye problems in children from Prevent Blindness America. If a vision problem isn't to blame, here's some advice on coping with children's fears from Kid'sHealth.
