6yo DD clingy and waking in the night

[buildingmycorestrength]

Oh dear Lord, I thought we were over this.

She's six. She has not always been an easy child to get to sleep, faaaaar from it, but we had it totally cracked for a good few months... we'd say goodnight, go downstairs, she'd cheerfully put herself to sleep. All fine.

She had something set her off about ten days ago (furniture moved in her room combined with a scary story at school) , and now she is 'scared of bedtime', scared of bad dreams, needs us to sit with her while she goes to sleep, comes and gets us in the night, tears before bath because she knows bedtime is coming. It is just awful.

WTF is going on? What can we do? I am just exhausted by these shenanigans. It is hard to tell what is genuine fear and what is sort of learned/habitual now. I'm going crazy with it. What do we do?

Thank you, will look at that.

We are going to let her and her big brother camp on the floor in her room so she has some company. Let's see how that goes.

Have bought the book now and it seems good. So far I think we have figured out that she is going to bed a bit too late, given that she doesn't seem to be able to sleep in past 6. So we'll move bedtime earlier tonight.

More steps will come later...introducing new explicitly agreed steps into her bedtime routine, gradually agreeing that we can just sit in the same room rather than lying next to her (we have been round this before, believe me!) and so on.

But the book is good at explaining why these things are important in a way kids can understand, and it isn't just Mummy saying it so it seems more official.

Thanks so much for the recommendation, and I am looking at her other books for my son too!