DD has been very good at bedtime for a good long while now, but over the past few months we've been getting a lot of drama and anxiety about nightmares. She has only actually had a nightmare a half dozen times. When she does, she comes into our bed - which I was happy to let her, although it's a BAD night's sleep from that point onwards. However, she's increasingly agitating at bedtime to come straight into our bed for the whole night, saying she's scared that she might have a nightmare. On the surface, it seems like a classic tactic to keep me in the room/be allowed into our bed. But she does genuinely appear to work herself up into quite a state worrying about the possibility of nightmares.
I don't really know how to handle it. I'm attempting to help her find ways to deal with the worry (explaining that thinking too much about something that MIGHT happen is a different problem to the actual nightmare, to try and think about nice things when she's falling asleep, that if she does wake up scared she can come into our bed, and we bought freaking worry dolls!) She does have drama queen tendancies, but I'm genuinely on the fence as to whether she's being histrionic or is genuinely getting herself upset about possible nightmares. I feel like maybe I need to find a better way to help her deal with worry. But I'm kind of out of ideas....