Melatonin

[Wheeliemummy]

My daughter was subscribed melatonin just over a month ago to see if it helped her get a more restful sleep.
Now before anyone says it, yes we've been through sleep training, self settling, different routines, meals and behaviour possibilities but nothing has worked. This was definitely a last resort and to be honest I hate the idea of her being on any kind of drug.

I'm now nearly out of the melatonin bottle so planning to make a appointment with a GP, I'm confused about the effect it has had on her 🤔 she went from waking up 5 times a night to twice a night which is a big improvement but also her behaviour during the day is much much better, she's not so agitated, restless and tired. She plays content and eats more which is lovely to see.
I'm just now worried that if she's off melatonin now we will go back to square one? Also I'm terrified that there's not information on wether we know if melatonin has any long term effects?
Thanks for reading!!

I went to a conference about sleep difficulties in children a while back.

It was interesting the data that had 'accidentally' come out from their studies (hadn't been what they started to look at, at all), relating to children and teens behaviour, and their sleep patterns.

They said that it had always been assumed by them (I I think fair to say, most of us) that dc with ADHD, and other disorders didn't sleep well because of the ADHD, but [and they said a lot more research would need to be done on this - they were early findings] through working on the project they were doing, they were now looking at a hypothesis that it was the other way round, and that the lack of quality sleep in both young dc and in teens, was the cause of the prolonged and more challenging behaviour in the day, rather than the other way round.

Plus, there was the added thought that, when parents aren't getting any sleep themselves, then their patience is stretched to the limit, and they don't cope so well with challenging behaviour in the day, whereas, once the parents began to get half way back towards normality, they were much better equipped to cope with challenging behviour when it arose, and it then didn't escalate as much.

So lots of interesting research to be done (sorry - interesting to me, possibly you are too tired at the moment to have the capacity to take much notice. Lack of sleep is a killer ).

However, sorry, I'm not medical and don't know much about longer term effects of Melotonin.