Melatonin Can Help ADHD Children Sleep Better: Information from My Experiences

Melatonin is a hormone found naturally in your body. The main job of melatonin is to allow a person to fall asleep. Children with ADHD often do not produce enough melatonin in their body. This can lead to a lot of sleepless nights for mom and dad. Don’t worry; there is a solution to this problem. Melatonin supplements can help children with ADHD sleep.

Melatonin supplements can be found at most stores in the vitamin, or herbal section. They will cost you around seven dollars for a bottle of 120. This is a very inexpensive way to help your ADHD child get some much needed rest. When a child with ADHD doesn’t get enough sleep it can wreck the entire day. They can be extra wound up and irritable. Since a child with ADHD is always on the go they often feel no need for sleep. The melatonin helps with this. It is given about twenty to thirty minutes before bedtime. The melatonin helps to calm the child enough for them to fall asleep.

The amount of melatonin given will vary some by each child. You will usually find melatonin in three to five milligrams in the store. Give the lowest dose possible when first starting out. Too much can cause your child to have nightmares. Usually a dosage between three and five milligrams will work just fine. Another problem with giving too much Melatonin is it can have a reverse effect on the ADHD child. Instead of helping them sleep, it keeps them awake.

My daughter has been taking melatonin for three months now. She has severe ADHD. She takes it on school nights. On the weekends I do not give it to her. This allows her body to have a break. We give her the melatonin about thirty minutes before bedtime. Usually within fifteen minutes she would be out for the night. Recently the melatonin was not helping her sleep all night so we changed her dosage from three milligrams to five milligrams. This did not show any improvement. We tried one night of six milligrams and the results were terrible. She was up the whole night. She would not go to sleep. It was like someone had given her several pots of coffee. Needless to say we now know six milligrams is just too much for her.

A person is not supposed to build up a resistance to the melatonin, but each person’s body is different. We didn’t give the melatonin to her for a few nights and now she is doing great on it. My daughter’s ADHD really causes problems for her when it comes to getting enough rest. Before we started the melatonin it was nothing for her to awake at three in the morning and be ready to go for the day. Now that we have been using the melatonin she is able to get a good night sleep. This is great for her and for us. Going on four hours of sleep for several nights makes for a cranky mom.

There are no side effects from the melatonin. Prescription sleep medications often make the person become dependent on them. There isn’t that problem with the melatonin. If your child has ADHD and is having trouble sleeping give melatonin a try.