Melatonin no longer helping my autistic child sleep, anyone experienced this?

[Bugling]

Looking for advice from parents who have prescribed melatonin for autistic children who sleep very little. My DC is 8, was prescribed melatonin last year (oddly, almost to the day) and it has been a godsend in him being able to go to sleep around 8pm rather than midnight. He will still usually wake up early hours for an hour or 2 then go back to sleep. But the last 3 nights he is back to being awake 3-4 hours after taking it, awake until around 10-11pm and it is killing me as he still wakes up in the night. Has anyone had this happen? Is it a case of giving him more? The GP said we could give him 4ml after we started on 2ml.

Do you think the warmer weather is contributing?

Does DS take melatonin all the time? There is a school of thought by some that medication breaks help.

Some find an increase in dose helps. Others don’t. Some of those that don’t try other medication either as well as or instead of.

If DS wakes during the night as well as having difficulty getting to sleep, have you tried prolonged release as well as immediate release melatonin?

We had this problem and increased the dose as the paediatrician suggested but it didn’t help. I then read something about a much smaller dose actually being better and so that is what we did. Our DC takes between 0.5 - 1ml which seems to work.

However, given it’s only been 3 nights it could well be the weather or just a temporary blip.

DD was swapped to slow release melatonin for this reason and it worked.