Calloway’s son was too keyed up to go to sleep. In desperation, she talked to her pediatrician and got some unexpected advice. “The pediatrician suggested I give melatonin a try,” she recalled Calloway, and admitted, “I thought, ‘That’s odd.’ Is it okay for small children? And he said absolutely.”
Calloway is not alone. Although it’s hard to put a number on just how many parents are using melatonin to help their kids sleep, the overall use of melatonin has skyrocketed. The amount more than doubled between 2007 and 2012.
When it comes to kids, experts urge caution. Melatonin is a hormone which the body secretes at night. “Some people call it the vampire hormone, “ explained psychologist and sleep expert William David Brown, with the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas. “We think it’s melatonin that tells the body what time of day it is and it also tells the body what season of the year it is, because as days shorten or lengthen you produce more or less melatonin as a result of that.”
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