Melatonin for a 3 year old?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 3 year old has autism (diagnosed by a doctor) and his developmental pediatrician recommended 1 mg of melatonin to help him fall asleep and stay asleep. It helps with falling asleep but he still wakes up at night. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying it in the short term but I wouldn’t use it longer than a week or two at a time without a doctor’s advice.

Your developmental pediatrician is not the smartest. Melatonin does not help with staying asleep, so I'm not sure why they would recommend it for that.

Hard to get that job without being pretty sharp. You can get *slow release* melatonin that absolutely help children stay asleep. Maybe the developmental ped. mentioned it and pp forgot/didn’t hear. Or maybe she forgot to clarify. But plenty of parents with asd kids use both melatonin and/or slow-release melatonin.

Be careful, however, because it is contraindicated for some medications including anticonvulsants.

[Anonymous]

We use the gummies on our 5 year old sporadically. It works really well. Probably once a week.