Laura Putnam never thought her sons would receive melatonin supplements at day care.
She enrolled them at Apple Blossom Childcare in Falmouth, Maine, when they were 1 and 2 years old. She said she hasn’t given them melatonin and hasn’t granted anyone else permission to give them the supplement, which mimics a hormone produced in the brain that makes people sleepy.
But in August, Putnam said, she learned from a former employee at the day care center that he and others had given melatonin gummies to children, including her older son, who was 4 years old at the time. She said she saw text messages between the former employee and the day care center’s owner about melatonin use.
Putnam asked her older son about it. “He said, ‘Oh, it makes the babies go’ — and then he made a snoring sound,” she said. “He told me he got them when he was younger and they made him very sleepy. And then I asked if his younger brother got them, and he looked at me and said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘How often does he get them?’ And he said, ‘Every day.’”
Putnam showed her younger son a photo of a bottle of melatonin gummies. “He immediately saw it and said, ‘That’s’ — and then he inserted the name of the day care provider,” she said.
Lindsay Corcoran said her daughter was also at Apple Blossom from ages 15 months to nearly 4. She said she also learned from texts between the former employee and the owner that her daughter received melatonin. “I was shocked to see her name and that there was this substance given to her without my consent,” she said.
Several parents, doctors and lawmakers nationwide are raising concerns, saying giving melatonin to young kids isn’t well-studied and shouldn’t be done without parental permission. Last year, child care staff members in New Hampshire and Washington made headlines for dispensing melatonin to children. An Indiana day care center’s director was sentenced to six months in jail after having pleaded guilty to giving melatonin gummies to kids without their parents’ consent.
In Maine, it isn’t illegal for day care centers to give children melatonin or other nonprescription medications, but they need parental consent. In August, after it received a complaint, Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services launched an investigation into allegations of abuse, neglect and licensing violations at Apple Blossom Childcare. Four months later, Putnam said, the agency informed her in a letter that her older son was “a victim of abuse/neglect.”
“I think I felt that, you know, I let my kids down,” Putnam said. “Anyone who is a parent, your No. 1 job is to protect your kids above all else. And getting that letter that said my son has been named on the record as a victim of abuse slash neglect, I feel like I let him down.”
Apple Blossom’s owner, Alison Lakin, appealed the December findings. Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services overturned its findings of abuse and neglect, indicating “there is insufficient information in the case record to support” them.
Lakin told NBC News, in part, “Apple Blossom Childcare has earned and enjoyed an impeccable reputation for years, which has been and always will be based on conscientious care and a love of helping children unlock their unique potential.”
Lakin is also appealing the findings that she violated day care licensing rules.
Putnam is frustrated with the reversal: “How is giving a nonverbal toddler melatonin in the middle of the day without parental consent not abuse or neglect? It doesn’t make any sense in my mind.”
Researchers say melatonin use in kids is on the rise. Calls to poison control centers from kids taking too much melatonin have also steadily increased over the last 10 years, a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2022 found. While low doses of melatonin supplements may be given to children safely, Dr. Rebecca Fisk, a pediatrician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, doesn’t recommend melatonin use in kids under 5.
“We’re putting something unknown in a toddler’s body,” Fisk said. “We have no long-term studies on what is going on with melatonin in children, especially that young. We don’t know what it does to growth and development.”
Maine state Sen. Teresa Pierce is introducing a bill that would require day care operators to notify parents if their centers are under investigation.
“We need to protect kids, and parents need to be informed,” said Pierce, a Democrat. “My bill will create more transparency when an investigation starts at a day care or a child care area so that the parents that are in that day care can be informed of the investigation going forward.”
Putnam is pushing for stiffer penalties.
“I would like to see some repercussions for mistreating children, and I don’t feel like that has happened in my case,” she said.
