There was a collection of studies about a decade ago that seemed to determine the optimal use of Melatonin was about 350 micrograms taken about 1 hour before bed. The ideal was also slow release which was the best you could do to match the bodies process currently. The doses you can buy are far too high even the 1.5mg ones.
Just so you know, some doctors recommend being careful with melatonin for kids since it’s a hormone and there’s not a ton of research on long-term effects. They say it might disrupt sexual development during adolescence. Kids produce more melatonin naturally and it is though that a reduction in melatonin production during adolescence is actually what triggers pubertal development. Might be worth looking into a bit more before making it something regular.
When I brought up melatonin with a sleep doctor a few years ago she agreed with my understanding that given a lack of uncontroversial studies its unclear whether it is a health risk or not.
It can be difficult to find low dose melatonin unfortunately. Especially in slow release.
Often kids sleep tablets are better. Also kids chewable gummies can be cut in half to get an effective dosage. I've not found a good long release version of those.
i bought a bottle from cvs. 60 gummies each 5 mg. my kid was having trouble sleeping and these worked like a sledghammer, it was great! also comical, knowing the dose was way too high, i would slice the pinky-fingernail-sized gummy into 10 tiny pieces. “do you want this gummy?” “can i have more?” “no” “do you still want the little piece” “yes”. so then she would try to make it last by sort of licking it or just taking it in and out of her mouth and it would get lost of forgotten- funny business.
anyway, we dropped off the use of the sledgehammer precipitously as we wanted her to develop her own sleep skills and avoid any of these lesser known potentially negative effects. we still keep the (lifetime supply)tool in our back pocket for rare occasions, like traveling.
