melatonin actually has some data in regards to children dosing. anywhere from 2-5 milligrams could be used in a child but once again we want to find out why is the child not sleeping. pediatrician should always be consulted first before even starting any types of medications like this. it could be related to possibly they are starting school they are anxious maybe they are not sleeping at night because their room is noisy. so we have to find out really what are the root causes of the problems rather than go right ahead to medicating them. so as a pharmacist i would say to patients you know what let's talk to the pediatrician first and let's see what's going on before we start a child on melatonin. you know with most of these products once again we don't really have a lot of data to go by. so we don't know long-term use in some of these products how it's going to affect the child. children are not little adults. a lot of people i think are confused by that. their livers and their kidneys are not developed like yours and mine. so when they get a drug or they get any type of product in them they are going to react a lot differently than we are. so we want to make sure that people exercise caution.
is melatonin safe to give a five year old?