It was bedtime at the campsite we were sharing with four families when the kids formed a conga line, one hand clutching a s’more, the other on the tiny shoulder of the person in front of them. The other families had camped together before; ours hadn’t. “Gummy, gummy, gummy!” the kids began to chant. Apparently, it was, when the sun doesn’t set until nearly 9 p.m. Plus melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone that the brain produces to regulate the sleep-wake cycle.
There is an approved medical usage for melatonin, and it’s to treat something called delayed sleep-phase syndrome. Children with this syndrome, for largely unknown reasons, fall asleep two or more hours later than a typical bedtime. In that situation, a sleep-medicine specialist might recommend giving .5 milligrams of melatonin four-to-five hours prior to bedtime, saysin New York. But Scripps says parents rarely follow that advice. Instead, she says, “They give them a gummy right before bed.
Brooke, who works in financial communications and lives in Easton, Connecticut, started giving her now-15-year-old son melatonin when he was 5. “His pediatrician neither supports nor dissuades him from taking it,” she says. “He still takes a very low dose, so I often wonder if it’s almost a placebo effect. But he claims he’s unable to sleep without it.”