Photo-illustration: The cup; Photos: Getty
It was bedtime at the campsite we shared with four families when the kids formed a conga line, one hand holding a s’more, the other on the small shoulder of the person in front of them. The other families had already camped together; ours had not. “Gummy, gummy, gummy!” » the children started to sing. Apparently it was melatonin time.
I let my 5 year old son have a candy. After all, it can be difficult to fall asleep in a tent, especially in summer, when the sun doesn’t set until around 9 p.m. Additionally, melatonin is a natural hormone that the brain produces to regulate the sleep-wake cycle. It’s been available for purchase since the mid-90s. And everyone was doing it – and not just at the campsite. Last year, nearly one in five school-aged children had taken the supplement in the past 30 days, according to a 2023 study published in JAMA Pediatrics. And among these children, one in four took it every evening.
A few minutes after eating hers, my daughter passed out, like all the other children, even the “horrible sleepers”. I could see how a parent and child could become addicted. No more calls for water, back massages, stories or a podcast. No need to sit on the floor in comforting silence like a human security blanket. When children take melatonin, it may put them to sleep shortly afterward. Melatonin, parents tell me, takes the hassle out of going to bed and eases tension in the house for everyone.
Melatonin’s negative impact on children’s health remains more of a vague possibility than a concrete inevitability, which partly explains why so many well-informed parents and caregivers continue to ignore or downplay negative headlines. The American Academy of Pediatrics notes somewhat opaquely that “there are concerns about how it could affect a child’s growth and development” if used for a long time. “We just don’t know for sure what the impact is, and that’s the problem,” says Lauren Hartstein, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado’s Boulder Sleep and Development Lab, who adds that there is a dearth of research on the long-term effects of regular melatonin consumption by children and that existing research has been inconclusive. Participants in a 2018 study reported delayed puberty after taking the hormone for an average of seven years as children. In animal studies, melatonin has been shown to suppress the secretion of gonadotropin-releasing hormone, which stimulates the production of other hormones that help the ovaries and testes mature and function. The body’s nocturnal secretion of melatonin tends to decrease throughout childhood, alongside the progression of sexual maturity. Increase the former and you may slow down the latter. And a 2022 study concluded that “the question of whether or not melatonin might play an important role in the onset of puberty in men remains open.”
The contents of the gum bottles are also a question mark, even though the packaging tells a simple, happy story. Olly, which makes children’s sleep gummies, as well as gummies designed for children to ‘chill out’ and lollipops for a ‘calm mood’, packages its sleep gummies in square jars – word sleep is in all caps, with many font sizes larger than the actual ingredients list. Nature’s Bounty, for its part, calls its Kids Sleep Jelly Beans a “fun and delicious way to encourage peaceful sleep in children.”
But melatonin supplements can contain up to 347% of the melatonin they claim to contain, according to a 2023 research letter published in JAMA. (Although melatonin is a natural hormone, most melatonin supplements are made by synthesizing pharmaceutical-grade chemicals.) And 26 percent of melatonin supplements contain large doses of serotonin, which can cause restlessness , increased heart rate and blood pressure, as well as nervous system disorders. dysfunction, says Varun Vohra, Pharm.D., academic and executive director of the Michigan Poison and Drug Information Center and co-author of a 2022 report on melatonin from the CDC.
Consumers filed a class-action lawsuit last year claiming Olly adult melatonin supplements contain up to 274 percent more melatonin than the stated amount, and Procter & Gamble is being sued for allegedly selling Olly supplements. melatonin containing up to 163 percent more melatonin than users. think they get it. A third lawsuit alleges that Zarbee’s children’s melatonin gummies specifically contain more than double the one-milligram amount listed on the label. “Parents have been worried about their children’s sleep for ages,” Hartstein says. What has changed, she says, is that “melatonin is widely marketed to parents as a quick fix.” Mom influencers who are #toddlermoms and travel a lot as a #family are often proud #ZarbeesPartner or #NatrolPartner, crediting the company’s melatonin gummies for easier bedtimes and “better-rested kids.”
There is one approved medical use for melatonin, and that is to treat what is called delayed sleep phase syndrome. Children with this syndrome, for largely unknown reasons, fall asleep two or more hours later than their usual bedtime. In this situation, a sleep medicine specialist might recommend giving 0.5 milligrams of melatonin four to five hours before bed, says Tessa Scripps, MD, a pediatrician and assistant professor of pediatrics at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital in New York. . But Scripps says parents rarely follow that advice. Instead, she said, “They give them a candy right before bed. » Melatonin taken shortly before bedtime likely relies on the sedative effect of higher doses (more than a milligram) compared to the “sunset effect” of lower doses. According to one study, 0.5 milligrams of instant-release melatonin works best when given four to six hours before “sleep initiation.”
As melatonin gummies enter more and more homes and children increasingly realize that they taste almost identical to regular gummy candies, some children are buying them by the handful. The number of calls to poison control centers for pediatric melatonin ingestions jumped 530% between 2012 and 2021, according to a 2022 CDC report. And a 2024 CDC report found that about 11,000 pediatric emergency room visits between 2019 and 2022, or 7% of the total, concerned unsupervised ingestions of melatonin. (In general, children are asymptomatic, although incidents of gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, and CNS symptoms have been recorded.) Melatonin overdoses have become so common that the Council for Responsible Nutrition, the leading professional association for supplement industry, is now calling on manufacturers to start using child-deterrent packaging for flavored and chewable melatonin products. As a dietary supplement, melatonin is not regulated by the FDA and does not need to be in child-resistant packaging; The new CRN guidelines are recommendations, not requirements.
A friend whose preschool daughter sneakily helped herself to melatonin gummies without permission (she was fine) was visited by Child Protective Services after casually mentioning it at her daycare the next morning . “It was obviously a horrible experience,” she told me. “CPS opened an investigation and had us put all of the children’s medications in a safe. »
Brooke, who works in financial communications and lives in Easton, Conn., started giving her son, now 15, melatonin when he was 5. “His pediatrician doesn’t support him or dissuade him from taking it,” she says. “He’s still taking a very low dose, so I often wonder if it’s almost a placebo effect. But he claims he is unable to sleep without it.
Although no research suggests that people can become physically dependent on melatonin, many children like Brooke’s son and their parents are convinced that sleep is elusive without the substance. They are, in a sense, psychologically dependent. Some daycares have become so dependent on supplements that they have broken the law in favor of trouble-free sleep. In February, a former Indiana day care director was sentenced to six months in prison for handing out melatonin candies to more than a dozen children at nap time without their parents’ consent. . And last month, the owner of a New Hampshire daycare was arrested along with three of her employees for sprinkling melatonin on children’s food.
Amy, an architect from Brooklyn, first gave her son melatonin when he was 6 years old. “He had a lot of behavioral problems and was provisionally diagnosed with ADHD. We realized he was only sleeping about nine hours a night, and his doctor suggested it,” she says. (Studies have shown that melatonin may benefit children with autism and ADHD, who tend to have a disrupted circadian rhythm.) “A year later, that same doctor was saying, ‘Wait, melatonin doesn’t It is not intended for long-term use! ‘Basically, he told me what I had already read at the time, which was that there were no long-term studies on the subject.
Experts worry about behavioral and medical problems that melatonin may hide. “I so understand wanting to quickly restore some sanity to your home by ordering something that will be at your door in two hours. I have three kids and I’ve climbed into the crib before,” says Cora Breuner, MD, an attending physician at Seattle Children’s Hospital and professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “But teaching your children to fall asleep on their own, with seat belts and sockets covered, and introducing foods at the right time is one of the most important things parents can do,” she says.
Amy’s son is now 9 years old and he still takes melatonin almost every night. “Nowadays, the problem is not so much a behavioral problem as the fact that he has become addicted to it,” she says. She tries to wean him off it with mixed results. “There were nights when we didn’t give it to him, and the difference is dramatic,” she says. “He struggles, does a handstand and sings. He will ask for melatonin and I will start by saying “no”. But an hour later he’s all over the place, so I’m going to give it to him even though I still disagree about it.
All parents and children’s names have been changed to protect their identities.