Naps again?!

Post Reply New Topic

OK so I started giving my son melatonin at night, he get's half a pill. It's been a miracle suplement as far as we are concerned because it's just allowing our son the much needed sleep he just wasn't getting. We started last Tuesday night, well the past 2 days my son has taken naps, this is a rare thing that occurs, but it seems that his sleep is possibly getting more back on track than we even ever thought of.

Is this normal? Does this happen to kids that take it?

He's 4 on Saturday, and I know not all 4 y/o's still do naps, or long ones either, but he hasn't had a regular nap during the day since he was about 20 months old. So to see him start napping again, I'm trying to determine to worry or not, or work on getting him to nap at a much more acceptable time, and not 4pm in the afternoon.

Interesting. Sorry, I can't answer your question specifically, except to say that a "normal" preschooler will be going in and out of naps at that age, depending on growth spurts, level of activity, etc. ... and as part of phasing out naps it's normal for kids to push them later into the day. How that all fits for a child who hasn't napped for years, however, is a mystery to me.

I had one child who stopped napping at a year and a half and never looked back (although we never tried melatonin, either) and one who drove us crazy from 3 1/2 through K not being able to decide if she wanted to take a nap and when.

How much is half a pill? The dosage maybe be too strong for him if it's affecting his daytime sleep habits.

The bottle says 500 mcg. The Dev Ped told me to try .5 mg, so one whole pill is the dosage, right?, he told me to try, but I went with half, so about .25mg. So I'm giving less than what he advised. That would make sense tho, that it's too strong.

Oh, never mind then. That's actually a small dose I would think. I've heard of adults taking up to 5mg (5000 micrograms) so I would think even for a 4 year old 250 micrograms would be a very small amount.

I'm going to give it a few more days, I think it might just be he had an exciting and exhausting weekend, could account for the naps. He's still going to sleep by 9:30 pm even with the nap and sleeping until 7-8 am, so he's still getting more sleep than he's used to.