anybody sedate their kids to sleep?

[pillsthrillsandbellyaches]

ds, 3 1/2, with asd. waking at 1am and not going back to sleep till following night. everyone on a knife edge!

paeditrician on annual leave, but gp prescribed circadin (slow release melatonin tablet). seems to help get him to sleep, but still waking during night.

anyone got any ideas? anyone use drugs?

hmm... never came out right.

what i actually mean is, does anyone use medication to get their child to sleep, and if so, what?

we use circadin too, its only slow release though if you dont break the tablet and its swallowed whole so if you can get your ds to swallow it whole it may help keep him asleep. it works sometimes with my ds but not others seems very hit and miss for us when it works and when it doesnt!!

Circadin is meant to keep them asleep all night as it is slow release. Is your DS swallowing it whole?

melatonin gets my son to sleep but doesn't keep him asleep, even the slow realease, we use amtriptlyine but he does get a hangover affect from it so we don't use it all the time, medised is another one you could try... so in answer to your question yes i do and so do a lot of friends i know.

Riven drugs her dd - might be worth looking for her ideas.

Valergan Forte. Circadin to get him to sleep and Valergan Forte to keep him asleep, but it's a bit of a chemical cosh and would rather not use it. However, it has saved our sanity and our health. It's a bit like Phenergan but stronger and doesn't seem to have the same potential for a contradictory effect, i.e., causing hyper-activity

I imagine the paed will try a short course of sleeping tablets first off, and you can probably ask the GP for them before the paed gets back. They're no good long term, but short term (under 2 weeks) can break the pattern and then sometimes when you come off them the sleep habit is reset. Meanwhile you get 2 weeks sleep so nothing to lose by trying this one. The other thing is you could try waking him. If he always wakes at 1am, if you set your alarm for 12:40, give him a good prod, he may half-wake, reset the sleep cycle and then go on to get another 4 hours or something. Not something you try unless desperate but our learning disabilities nurse said it can have very good results.

Can't advise on sedatives, sorry. Paed thinks they would be dangerous with DD1's particular brand of Epilepsy.

we just started using chloral hydrate, tried all the others but they didnt work for ds.

Riven what dose is dd on and is it the special order 500mg/5mls one or the Welldorm 143.3mg in 5ml?

ah right just trying to work out what a decent dose is for ds.
he got the 500ml/5ml from the hospital with the instruction to start at 2.5 mls then after a week up to 5mls if that didnt work.

pharmacist gave me the Welldorm on repeat as thats cheaper so the equivalent dose is 8.75mls going up to 17.5mls if it doesnt work, which seems a bit high eh?
ds is 17.5kg and i've been giving him the lower dose so far with ok, but not great results!

ds has wakened a few times shouting/screaming with it which is unusual for him, maybe like nightmares or something?

did you get that usb stick?

fab, let me know if she likes it and if you could post it back when you've finished with downloading it that would be fab!

We use melatonin for dd2 (3.11 ASD), she still wakes in the night but using the Melatonin i can get her back down within 20 minutes. I would say its worth giving the melatonin first, dd2 has now got into the routine of going to sleep at 8pm and we don't have to use the melatonin every night (as we did to start with).

We use circadin for our ds who is autistic and has adhd.
He tried taking it whole but he was just gagging on it so now i crush it up and put it into a yoghurt drink and he goes off to sleep within half an hour no problem....our problem was not sleeping all night though it was getting him to sleep and keeping him there but these seem to have worked a treat!
Hope this helps.

I am seriously thinking of seeing the Dr over my ds's sleep he is 15 has never really slept more than a few hours a night but would get into bed at 10 for the last couple of years, but now he's sleeping less than 2 hours a night and as I've told his psychiatrist theres no way in the world I can make a 15 year old who is as big as he is go to bed as I would likely get assaulted. I have tried but am now at the end of my tether with him last night I finally got to sleep properly at 4 but was up at 5.30 to get him up for school pick up at 7.15 I like my half hour to wake up and have a coffee before battle commences with him,something needs to give soon but I hate admitting it.We tried melatonin but it never worked.

hi guys,
thanks very much.
had no idea there were so many different things to try.

he is swallowing the circadin whole because i hide it in a mouthfull of his cottage pie (which he has for dinner every night...)

it is not keeping him asleep. he woke at 4am this morning and i lay with him till he went to sleep at 6am. then he slept till 8.

he has always woke in the night but until a fortnight ago he was in a cot, so it was manageable because he couldn't get out. but now he can get out, so he has a mattress on the floor and nothing else at all in the room. it's quite depressing actually.

Hi Pill
Its just a thought but have you tried giving him his tablet a little later in the evening.....that way he may sleep a little longer?

Hope that does not sound patronising at all...its not meant to.

no, not taken that way at all!
thanks natty, i see what you mean. if it was just before bed. yes he usually has supper a bit later.

of course the bloody jobsworth in the pharmacy told us that of course we couldn't crush it up or half it.

is that just bollocks?

To be honest i dont know....i was hoping that when we got them they would have been in a capsule form that i could have put in my son's drink, but we were given the tablets so i had to improvise and just crush the tablet into the drink instead! I put it into a munch bunch yoghurt drink and even though he knows the tablet is in there he still drinks it.

My son has just taken his now and by around 9pm he will be asking to go to bed as he is tired! He will then sleep right through until the morning when i wake him.

Anything is worth a try it may or may not work for you, but you have nothing to loose!

Glad you were not offened by my last comment....sometimes when reading things they can sound differently to how they are meant!

To be honest i dont know....i was hoping that when we got them they would have been in a capsule form that i could have put in my son's drink, but we were given the tablets so i had to improvise and just crush the tablet into the drink instead! I put it into a munch bunch yoghurt drink and even though he knows the tablet is in there he still drinks it.

My son has just taken his now and by around 9pm he will be asking to go to bed as he is tired! He will then sleep right through until the morning when i wake him.

Anything is worth a try it may or may not work for you, but you have nothing to loose!

Glad you were not offened by my last comment....sometimes when reading things they can sound differently to how they are meant!

Oh that was posted twice LOL!