OP Said: "I have to say, I don't like it when others who don't believe in something dismiss or patronise another person or what they believe in.
Technodad and Curlew, I think the fact that you presume I haven't had the sense enough to check if my DD's distress is down to something else show's that you are doing this."
Erm, it is an anonymous forum, and you have name changed for your post. I have no idea who you are, and what your education levels or child care qualities are like.
If you take your child to the doctor with an cold, and the doctor says "have you tried child paracetamol" do you get 30 mates in the room and all start having a massive go at the doctor and accuse them of patronising you for not knowing automatically that you would have tried the simplest solutions first. Or do you say politely "yes doctor, we have tried that for a week, but the cold just won't shift and it has moved to DCs chest".
One of the problems here, is that people read things the way they want to read them, and assign a "tone" to what ever is written. If we met in person and had this discussion face to face, you would likely (I hope) interpret the same words as an attempt to be reassuring, rather than patronising or rude, because we would be able to use non-verbal communication at the same time. The statement that there is "no such thing as ghosts" was intended to reassure, not patronise (although in retrospect it may have been a poor choice of wording). If you did take offence to this during a face to face meeting, I would be able to judge your offence through non-verbal communication, and back-track a little to calm you down.
On a forum, people say their thoughts in an end-to-end speech, and can not judge the mood of the reader during the journey to the end of their thoughts. Therefore, what is written is written, and the damage of any misinterpretation is already done. When everyone else then immediately returns fire, people go into defensive mode and the fighting begins (often with no link to the OPs initial question or discussion point).
Sure, I have been spiky later on in the thread, with others who have had a go at me, or made stupid claims about ghost children, but none of this has been aimed at you.
There are some thread on here where I will intentionally go on to make a point, and can be quite brash, but this wasn't intending to be one of them. Maybe everyone needs to try to see the best of people when they read a post, rather than to always assume the worst.
In any case, I doubt that this will have convince you or your friends on MN of my intentions, but I thought it worth saying in any case.
I hope things get sorted with your DD soon, whatever methods you employ to help her.
Techno.