is this anxiety? upset at night

[PooPooInMyToes]

Is it possible that my daughter has anxiety?

She has always been a little highly strung. At the moment the problem is that at night a physical problem that she has is massively exaggerated and she gets into a terrible state. There is no consoling her.

It used to be that her leg hurt. Something which during the day wouldn't be so bad. She had tests and they found nothing wrong. Her teacher appears to have been telling her that it is nothing and is a tiny little pain and i think this might have had an affect as she hasn't mentioned it for a while.

Now though its itching. She says she has an itchy bum and front bum. It all looks fine and during the day isn't bothering her apart from one teacher mentioning she was sore, but then when i asked my daughter she denied that.

But every night she is going nuts about it. Either before she goes to bed or when she wakes up in the night. In the morning she is fine.

I always assumed these things were physical but lately i am wondering if it might be mental partly mental.

[PooPooInMyToes]

Excuse the typos and i hope this makes sense. My daughter was getting upset again so i was in a hurry.

[Beamur]

It does sound like she is trying to prolong the time she is with you and doesn't want to settle.
What happens if you take her complaints seriously - (even if you don't think they are) and offer some pain relief/cream for the itching? Does that console her?
Is there anything else going on in her life that could be upsetting her - the time to settle to sleep could be stressing her if it's giving her time to mull over things that are bothering her.

[PooPooInMyToes]

Thanks for your reply. In the end i took her to see someone and it turns out that at the moment she is actually unwell

I think i will have to buy that story about crying wolf and see if she understands.

Me and my husband feel terrible!

[Beamur]

We all get it wrong sometimes, good news in some ways though - hopefully what she has is treatable and once sorted all should be better with the sleeping.

[hellymelly]

I have an anxious child, and I have done the same thing ..My dd worries about vomiting, as she's had quite a few tummy bugs in the past 6m, and one morning as often she was saying she was worried she would be sick etc, and I was less than sympathetic and told her to stop going on about it, then Dh did the same, then she was sick...oh dear.
I was going to suggest thread worms as a possible cause, you've obviously had her checked out though.

[PooPooInMyToes]

Yep its thread worms! I checked so many times and couldn't see any! Feel awful. She's really suffering with it!

[PooPooInMyToes]

Its so awful because we never know whether to take her seriously. Often she will have something minor and will make a massive fuss! We try to get her to rate it 1 to 10 which helps a bit.

[hellymelly]

thread worms go into the vagina, everywhere, they can be horrible. And they only come out at night so can be hard to spot. Your poor dd. My dd is quite highly strung and sensitive, and as you say, it can be hard to know when to act on things and when not.