The Placebo

I have often written about Big E's aversion to sleep.  It's not that he doesn't sleep, but his schedule follows that of a college freshman.  Asleep by midnight, up at noon. Unfortunately for all involved, he needs to be out of bed by about 6:50 each morning. This makes for a very cranky Yoyser.

Big E's pediatrician advised us to use a very low dose of melatonin, as needed.  The problem is, Big E needs it every night. I pop one of those magical white pills in his mouth and it's sleepsville in 30-45 minutes.

I don't feel comfortable giving this to Big E every night. I read all of these terrible things it does to your child (on the internet, of course) and it freaks me out.

I'm trying to wind him down naturally.  No screen time within two hours of bedtime, exercise, reading before bedtime, a hot toddy...you know, the usual suspects.

But it's not working.  Mr. Yoy and I devised a placebo scheme.  Yesterday, I purchased Mentos (The Freshmaker!) and replaced his melatonin with the candy.

We were curious to see if it was just a mental thing for him.

I placed on of these orange goodies on his plate with dinner.  Big E was immediately intrigued and not all that convinced.  He walked over and popped the top on the "melatonin" bottle.  It was filled with these new, better melatonins.

That was enough for him and he popped the Mento into his mouth.  He seemed very impressed with the flavor.

After dinner, we headed upstairs to get cleaned up and jammied.

I read an extra long excerpt from Big E's latest library book "I Survived..."  Last night it was tsunamis.

I looked over at Big E for the telltale signs that bedtime would not be an epic battle.  There was no yawning, no glassiness of the eyes, just lots of leg kicking and rolling.  Translation: I was screwed.

Fast forward 2.5 hours later and Big E is next to me in my bed, cuddling and gabbing away.

Our experiment failed big-time.  Luckily we head to the pediatrician on Monday, for Big E's check-up.