Did melatonin work for your child, if you went that route? My wife and I were just talking about that last night as a way to help our kid sleep better.
I have been taking melatonin regularly for many years now (since I was in my teens, in fact). It was recommended by a psychologist whom I was seeing for an anxiety disorder at the time.
I have found it to be safe, reliable and far preferable to other kinds of prescription or over-the-counter sleeping pills (which I also take, but not as much as I would have to if not for melatonin). It doesn’t knock you out the way that, say, Nyquil does (and there was a time when I was kind of forming a Nyquil dependency, which was not good…), but it can still cause grogginess. I usually take 3mg and have never had to take more than 5mg.
It is true that some brands are not very reliable when it comes to indicating doses, so you have to find a brand that you can trust.
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We’ve been using it for most of almost a year with success. In less than an hour after taking it they’ll ask to go to sleep. After a few hours it seems to wear off. So they’ll occasionally wake at night for normal reasons. When we were first figuring out an appropriate dose we accidentally started with too much (1mg). They went to sleep quickly and woke up a few hours later a bit scared and I’m guessing confused.
For most of the month of December I didn’t use it and was fairly disciplined about bedtime routine. It seemed to work almost as well. I’m sure that’s a lot harder in a household with multiple young kids. I know some people just use melatonin to help establish a schedule. After a handful of nights of bad jet lag I took some to help adjust.
People have told me that some supplement companies will have independent labs test and certify what’s in them. So there may be specific brands or companies out there. I wish supplements were regulated in the US.
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Ok as long as the insomniacs are all here, maybe someone can help me figure this out:
Often when I’m very tired, I can be exhausted but it feels almost more like a headache, like there is this weight in the brain that’s pushing in but is stuck. At this point everything is very noticeable, even my heartbeat, even if slow, seems to demand attention. If things go well and I’m able to finally sleep, it’s like something washes over through the brain’s middle relaxing all the way through, and this is also the point at which I feel my heart beat become so calm it’s unnoticeable. It feels like my brain is flooded with something. This is the point at which I might start having quasi-dreams as my unconscious thoughts wander, though I might pop back to consciousness.
It’s the washing over that I don’t get with traditional sleep aids. I just get more exhausted, more of a kind of “angry tired” rather than relaxed tired, without actually getting a boost into sleep.
Does this sound familiar to anyone? What is it I’m feeling with that “washing over” feeling, and can one get that with artificial help?
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Well… for me the whole point is doing something that is soothing that helps me reflect on things I like thinking about because my main issue with sleep is ruminating and/or intrusive negative thoughts. But definitely if you try to make it hard and unpleasant it will suck. Just like most things. But then if you like a challenge sure? Different strokes, after all.
So… meh… definitely not advice but more just a silly thing I do that seemed on topic at the time.
As for you, good luck with your sleep problems!
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I’m the same, which is why I cannot do highway driving, the monotony puts me right out. City driving is fine because there is plenty of things that I need to pay attention to.
I cannot trust myself to stay awake on the highway so don’t even attempt it.
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Sometimes in the middle of the night in an Ultra, I’ve realised that I have no recollection of the last hour’s running. I haven’t had an accident so there has been enough subconscious activity going on to keep me on the path, but the high level brain has definitely been taking a nap.
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I can’t do it at night. During the day there’s enough activity to hold my attention, but once I made the mistake of starting a long drive at sunset. Fortunately, there were rumble strips on the highway that woke me up before the car hit the guard rail. 
After that, I drove to the nearest rest stop, woke up my traveling companion (who had fallen asleep earlier), and we both had a lot of coffee before continuing the journey.
Since then, I do not fall asleep as a passenger in a car when there’s no one else awake to keep the driver company. It’s a struggle, because I used to do that all the time as a child. The sound of the engine was very soothing, and my parents would joke that I’d fall asleep before we’d even left our block.
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So, lying down in a basket full of kittens might be another technique, eh?
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Supposedly this tribe can nap while running: Rarámuri - Wikipedia
“96% of people who have mastered this technique…” nice weasel words…
While watching this, I thought about the techniques discussed here! 
For many, going to sleep is less of a problem than staying asleep.
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Also, that’s a bop…
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