I have read about giving autistic children small amounts of Melatonin before bedtime to help them sleep. How much is recommended for a 5 year old autistic boy, about 42 pounds.

I'd like to here from some people who have tried it and see what kind of results they saw.

Thanks

Hello, I'm the father of an autistic boy. He's eleven years old now, and we decided to try giving him a dosage of Melatonin about three months ago. My wife found this article online (http://www.autism.org/melatonin.html), and in it we found suggestions such as when, how much, etc. I hope this helps!

I have 2 sons who are autistic and 1 of them was told by his neuroligist to try melatonin.

We've been giving our 5yr old liquid melatonin that we bought at G*C, but they stopped making it! There is another company that carries it that I found by searching online, but the dosage is different between the two brands. In the meantime we've been crushing tablets and mixing them in his Almond Milk before bed. They are 1mg and we use 2 because he never gets the entire dose this way. The liquid was much better. He usually puts himself to bed about 30 min after taking it and sleeps until morning. For school he has to be up and ready by 7am (bus comes at 7:15) and we usually have to wake him, but he wakes up in a happy mood. Of course on weekends he's up at 7 also!

hi, i dont know if this message is to late, but i thought it still might help you. our doctrot recomendet melatonin also for our son, he is always very awake by the time he should go to bed :)
we give him a dose from 100mg 1/2 hour before bedtime, it helpes very good . but we found that he wakes now earlier up und is up right away. usally i have to kick him out of bed and it takes forever. so on weekends its not really nice when he is up at 6 :yawn:
we use it not every day, only if he is overstimming.
hope it helped
:wave:

Our son Alex is 4 and weighs 30+ lbs. He was not sleeping hardly at all until we tried Melatonin. We use Natrol and it is a liquid form. We give him 1 tsp. and within 30 min. he goes and gets a pillow and lays himself down in the floor (if we haven't carried him to the bed by then). The only problem we had after that was that some nights he would wake back up about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning so after reading some posts on that we discovered that in the winter with no sunshine he needed vita D. I put him on an extra calcium supplement that has vita D in it. I give him this in the morning hours. Hope this helps! Rachel

hi, i dont know if this message is to late, but i thought it still might help you. our doctrot recomendet melatonin also for our son, he is always very awake by the time he should go to bed :)
we give him a dose from 100mg 1/2 hour before bedtime, it helpes very good . but we found that he wakes now earlier up und is up right away. usally i have to kick him out of bed and it takes forever. so on weekends its not really nice when he is up at 6 :yawn:
we use it not every day, only if he is overstimming.
hope it helped
:wave:

Is 100 mg correct? My 4 yr. old son was just evaluated and it was suggested that he go on 250 to 500 mcg (microgram). From what I was reading online, 3mg is the normal dose for an adult.

Is 100 mg correct? My 4 yr. old son was just evaluated and it was suggested that he go on 250 to 500 mcg (microgram). From what I was reading online, 3mg is the normal dose for an adult.
Hi my daugter is on melatonin to help her sleep also and she is on the slow release capsules but the max dose is 9mg i would have thought 100mg would be way to much for a little boy of 4. But im no doctor maybe you should go back to the doctor and just get it checked to be on the safe side. You must think its a lot if you are posting this id go with yr gut instinct. Good luck

Is 100 mg correct? My 4 yr. old son was just evaluated and it was suggested that he go on 250 to 500 mcg (microgram). From what I was reading online, 3mg is the normal dose for an adult.

There are 1000 micrograms in a millagram, so 250 mcg would be 1/4 of 1 mg and 500 mcg woud be 1/2 mg. Most store brands come in 3 mg tablets. Kirkmanlabs has 1 mg chewable tablets and 3 mg chewables (they also have none chewable). I have found that this brand works better than any store brand we have tried. Less is best with melatonin. So you might want to start with 1/2 of a 1 mg tablet then work up to the amount that is most effective. My kids take 2 mg. I personally would not go over 3mg with a child.