Day Care + Melatonin = Stupid Stuff, Possible Misnomers, and Angry People

This story is worth following, especially if you’ve got kids small enough to be in day care.  Admittedly, that’s primarily what drew me in in the first place.  If you didn’t want to click, here’s the quick run-down:

• Day care facility has kids that apparently have trouble sleeping (which is to say, “regular kids”).
• Crafty day care worker(s) decide it’s a good idea to give kids melatonin to make them go to sleep more easily.
• People find out and tell the police.
• Investigation ensues.

Try to put this baby to sleep. I dare you.

That’s pretty much where we are now.  Understandably, lots of parents are alarmed, scared, and outraged over the whole thing.  If you don’t have a kid, then you probably aren’t aware that for some kids, it’s fucking insanely difficult to get them to go to sleep reliably.  My daughter is teething currently, and to say it’s a struggle to get her to go down for the night would be something of an understatement.  A more accurate representation would be to say that you’re trying to soothe to sleep an ogre who’s been set on fire and is screaming like you just tried to shove a Buick up its ass.

Try to hum “Brahms Lullaby” to those dulcet tones, and get back to me.

To say that I can sort of identify with the sick a-hole who was giving the kids melatonin would be almost fair.  But that doesn’t make it the right thing to do–the person(s) should definitely be fired (and they were), and maybe spend some time in jail.  Of course, I don’t know any of the legality in relation to this stuff, so maybe nothing at all will happen.

Moving right along, with respect to the melatonin itself–we don’t know that the kids were actually getting melatonin.  It’s a little more complicated than that, probably.  “Melatonin” can come in a variety of forms.  The story says that they’re a “supplement,” but I’m not sure that’s the correct terminology.  Specifically, if you’re talking about proper melatonin, that’s a hormone, probably extracted from some gland somewhere.  There are lots of synthetic melatonins out there, as well.  But to call it a “dietary supplement” or a “drug” doesn’t really tell you all that much about it–just that it’s a sleep aid.

The FDA doesn’t evaluate melatonin hormones or supplements for safety/efficacy/etc.  So nobody’s entirely certain that the kids got a safe dosage, whether the supplements were tainted (heavy metal toxicity and other taintedness is an outside possibility here), or whatever.  Plus, you’re talking about kids being given things that the parents weren’t aware of.

Not fucking cool.

What do you want to bet that we see some kind of questioning of the day care industry in general about this practice?  It wouldn’t be the worst idea, I guess, but I’d also be willing to bet that that’ll be taken to its logical conclusion–which will only make it stupid and end up serving no purpose.

Dubious sleep aid dispensing aside, the lesson to be learned from all of this–if you’re a parent, anyhow–is that you should take your kid to a place that you’re comfortable with.  Talking to people is really important, and if you’re not getting the kind of information you need, either from the folks working at the day care facility or their managers, finding a new day care isn’t the worst idea in the world.

If anyone knows of anyplace that “rates” or “grades” daycare centers, drop it in the comments.

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front page thumb: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peasap/ / CC BY 2.0

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbaunach/ / CC BY 2.0

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