After a little more than a week of giving Melatonin to Mitchell at night we decided to call it quits. The first night (a Friday) was great, he drank his juice with the Melatonin in it and put himself to bed roughly 30 minutes later. The next night it took a little longer so the 3rd night we upped the dose a bit and he became weepy just sitting in his chair crying but didn't want to go to bed.
That week Mitchell started melting down about the tiniest thing and was getting out of control. Hind sight is 20/20 as the saying goes and it always takes us a while to see patterns in things. By the following Sat we had new holes in our walls (and furniture) and Steve's sister who was watching Mitchell called to say he was walking around throwing things, everything, and she couldn't keep up with him and didn't know what he was upset about. Ding Ding. The bell goes off and we realize it could be the Melatonin, nothing else in his routine or diet had changed. Looking back we saw the behavior started after we started giving it to him.
A started looking into side effects of Melatonin and found this on www.livestrong.com
"Significant changes in mood and behavior can also develop in people taking melatonin. Your child may seem extremely happy or sad or experience paranoia, delusions or hallucinations, according to MedlinePlus. These symptons are more common in people using high doses of melatonin. However, because of these risks, Melatonin should never be goven to children with mental illnesses such as depression or psychotic conditions unless under the watch of a medical professional."
It really would have been nice to see something like this on ANY of the sights I visited regarding the use of melatonin for kids with Autism. To me it now seems obvious this was not going to work out well, Autism is a form of mental illness (not very PC, I know) and Autistic kids are known to have hallucinations and trouble dealing with emotions. All the Autism blogs and "advice" sights just raved about it's use and how safe it is. Unfortunately that's all there is on Melatonin, no medical sights talk about it in kids because it is homeopathic and not FDA approved. As for the high doses being a factor, the adult dose on the bottle is 4ML. Mitchell weighs 41 lbs, he is 13% for weight and 3% for height in his age group. The .5 ML we started with seems like it would be OK when compared to 4ML for a 150 lb adult, but when we had to start increasing that dose because it wasn't working, I was not comfortable with that.
That Sunday night we discontinued it's use. Mitchell was up until almost midnight and remains up til almost then every night since but the meltdowns immediately went away and he is much happier. It wasn't to difficult a decision to make for us - happy child or sleepless mommy - I'll take the happy child any day, I can catch up on my sleep in 20 yrs....maybe.
We don't have that issue anymore with Christopher, and I still get very little sleep. For what it's worth, Christopher used to have lots of sleepless nights. They lasted until around Kindergarten, I think. No meltdowns, just no sleep. I'm not sure why they stopped. He still has one occasionally, but not nearly as often as before. Maybe a maturity thing? Here's hoping! In the meantime, you can come over for coffee anytime!
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