Dd struggling to swallow melatonin

[mayaknew]

Dd had just been prescribed melatonin however it's been given in tablet form (this was all that was available) and she can't swallow it. I think she would take them crushed but the box says do not crush or chew. What would happen if I crushed them?

Any advice on helping her be able to swallow them? She has ASC and really needs them she cannot get over to sleep at night.

Can you practice taking tablets using food items? For example, start with hundreds and thousands, then moving to tic tacs, then jelly tots, then jelly babies cut up…

Place in the middle of tongue rather than right at the back. And don’t tip the head right back. Some people find it helpful to place on a spoon of yogurt or jam or similar. Some find drinking from a sports bottle helps - it is sealing the lips around something and the sucking action. Or some use these.

Crushing prolonged release melatonin will mean it is no longer prolonged release.

Good idea we can practice on sweets! I will try one of those gadgets as well and see how that goes. To be fair I don't think I could have swallowed a tablet when I was 9 it's a shame it doesn't come in liquid form.

Immediate release melatonin comes in liquid, but the nature of prolonged/modified release means it isn’t possible for it to be in liquid form.

Practice really does help. My DC have a condition where learning to take capsules/tablets as a young child is a necessity and practising is how that happens, although some need more practice than others. If DD prefers chocolate to sweets you can use chocolate chips.

so we have this issue but as our issue is our daughter getting to sleep - rather than staying asleep - we do crush it. We were advised this by the specialist nurse. We put it in peanut butter which disguises the taste well. We did try her on small pills etc but her sensory issues mean I don’t think we’ll get much headway on this until she is older.

We do jam/ yoghurt (teaspoon of) with the tablet in the middle followed by an immediate offering of a favourite drink out of a sports bottle. The natural reaction is to swallow the jam/ yoghurt with the liquid and down it all goes. DS does not have any food/ eating issues though so this may make this easier for us. Rarely gets crunched doing this. It’s just become routine and he now knows the drill…

Also look at diff brands! From recollection slentyo (sp, someone may correct me) is minuscule! Circardin huge in comparison!!