dd1 (5 this week), having "bad feelings in her head" at bed time , bit long

[melsy]

and is terrified of "tubes coming to get people". Basically my nephew was innocently describing tornadoes some weeks ago and this was his description of them , but it seems to have sparked off a terrible and disabling fear for her at bedtime. She has also started talking of seeing blood soaked faces in her dreams and babies coming out of stomachs,(Im not sure here if dh has been less than discerning with what shes viewed on TV when hes around).

Whatever we say to calm her fears , she wont believe us and continues to get more and more hysterical and upset,She looks frantic and maniacally chews her sleeve of her pj's, tonight she got to the point of wetting herself standing at the door of her bedroom . Frequent bed wetting has also been occuring, but Im not sure if this is connected or if its just developmental.

In the last year shes become extremely aware and sensitive to things and the impact traumas can have on people. We talked many months ago about others in countries without much money, houses like ours and all the electrical things that we have. She's thought about and weeks down the line has started asking about it quite often and said that shes upset that they are not looked after or have the things we do . This is just an example of how her mind works and how intensely she feels things and thinks about things.

Its becoming very frustrating and perplexing as nothing seems to calm her down or rest her mind and it takes nearly 2 hours now to do bed time and Im frankly pulling my hair out.

Ive tried several approaches ; sending any unpleasant images into bubbles and making her burst them, telling her that we are here to look after her and protect her and she needn't worry, explaining that that sort of bad weather happens elsewhere, laying in bed with her and doing meditation and Reiki and also letting her sit and do drawing for 10-15 minutes after our bed time reading.

DH and I are disagreeing about our approach as he seems to want to take the hard line,( easy way out for him is to ignore her behaviour ), as he thinks I mollycoddle her.

I dont quite know what else to do. Its becoming a problem all round. Shes also making comments frequently about kids at school laughing at her and others pushing her and not wanting to play with her.

It all sounds all to familiar to me as a child . When shes started at a local nursery 2.1/2 yrs ago and did so well to integrate and make friends, fitting in brilliantly , being independent and happy, I was over the moon .I thought that history wasnt going to repeat itself. She then started nursery at the chosen school and unfortunately it was the start of a long bout of illness for her that often had her in hospital. The diagnoses was not immediately life threatening, but she had enough procedures and tests , leading to a routine surgery, to traumatise her now about medical things.

I'm worried that shes taking after me as Ive had a history with post traumatic stress disorder (from medical situations) and anxiety disorder and I'm worried that shes showing some of the same mental traits.

Im sorry if this is long winded and all over the place, but a lot has gone on in this little persons life and Ive wanted to post about it al for some time (takes me a while to pluck up courage to talk about it all on here or with anyone). I seem to be really stressed with it right now.

If I dont reply tis due to flaking in bed after 48hrs of dh sicky bug and me sleeping on sofa!!!!

thisis yesterday, I know what you mean by quick fixes not being right. This has been going on for weeks and weeks , way before I wrote about it here. May be being in reception has fired off some new awareness which is adding to its escalation.

see if Tanya Byron was involved it would be all my doing??

awwwww imaginary that must have been very very hard for you all. I feel for you.

I think you may be right that there could be some ptsd involved here as she talks of her operation from last Dec quite often. Medical anything sends her hysterical now , the pre school boosters were awful.

It's a fine line melsy and one that I find very hard to balance. Dp does it better than I do. (Incidentally, if your dh was putting her to bed do you think this would happen in the same way?)

I literally 'interrupt' her thoughts. It's a bonafide technique to stop obsessive thinking. It might go like this:

Dd: 'mummy do you remember that girl in the hospital with the tube in her throat?' [she remembers this girl often]

Me: 'yes I do, she was very ill wasn't she? It was really sad.'

Then before dd can say her next thing I rather dramatically say something like

'oh, do you know what? I've totally forgotten what I did with xxx. Can you remember?'

And I get her on a whole different chain of thought. In dd's case she likes to be a bit of a detective and I always orchestrate something that she can be the 'winner' in. That way I leave her to sleep feeling confident and like a bit of a hero whilst also having totally avoided the anxious subject matter she started off with. I 'inadvertently' reassure her out of her worries by bringing in a totally unproblematic worry, such as something being lost. it does work even if I've explained it badly. I also find the pressure comes off me, I stop pretending not to be affected by her anxiety because we both displace it elsewhere.

Make any sense?

Totally makes sense, it acknowledges things quickly and briefly , then it moves their minds away quickly without having to do some "therapy" type tools on her, which makes things much more drawn out every evening. Dd1 loves being involved in finding things and helping as such, so it will be a good early technique. Im always losing stuff too lol! Although I cant loose things every evening !!!

I suppose I should have some ice cream and fruit tonight and relax a bit whilst I can , otherwise I see myself turning this into an obsessive subject too!!

Icecream and fruit sounds good to me.

With the 'technique', you have to be fairly dogged about it. In the end I almost felt like dd was relieved that I 'gave' her something to worry about, i.e. something lost.

BTW it doesn't have to be something lost. It can be any sudden thought. Something you meant to tell her, but it has to be like it comes abruptly into your mind and takes precedence over the other thoughts, thus making them seem less significant. Occasionally I've actually invented something I saw or heard that I knew would catch her attention and preferably make her smile.

OK , will Im sort of still here in the same place. It waxes and wanes and dies down and then my wonderfully creative nephew discusses tornado's again, or she sees a snippet of my parents are aliens (arrghh CITV) or something in a Disney book (Xmas carol) and its starts the fear cycle anew!

I use the mixture of the acknowledge distract technique (which btw the imaginaryfriend has been an amazingly useful technique) and EFT tapping as shes sometimes hysterical during the night with nightmares and these days she wants to now go to sleep with her light all ablaze.

Ive had a friend suggest getting one of those torch nightlights to see if that settles her and a special fairy doll to sit above her headboard and take all the nasties away?

My concern with taking her to the gp & going down that route is that it may be over over emphasise something that's already in the over active mind space for dd1 and make it seem like shes unwell again in her little mind.

Id say I have more tools to use to calm her down ,but theres been no real change to her behaviours as she seems to be seeing , reading and knowing about more and more in life and I suppose Im concerned shes not getting a proper rested night sleep. Im so like this its untrue, so its all proving a real challenges to make her path different as she gets older.

I suppose I just come here to see who's in the same boat and swap more ideas and just have somewhere to lean when it feels like a helpless situation. I dont know really.