Unsupervised exposures of infants and young children to melatonin have increased substantially in recent years, landing thousands of children in the emergency room.
The number of kids aged 5 and younger who went to an emergency room for unsupervised melatonin ingestion increased 420 percent from 2009 to 2020, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
More recently, melatonin was implicated in approximately 11,000 emergency department visits among infants and young children between 2019–2022.
This is likely. We use it for ours but she has actual documented insomnia and requires it to get an actual full night sleep. I could see parents using it for non-insomniac kids and then freaking out that they’re not rousing easily, “bring them to the ER!” Use supplements wisely and in conjunction with doctor/medical staff feedback.