I would like advice about my six year old daughter. We are having increasing difficulties getting her to sleep. She has always been a (sporadically) poor sleeper, since she was a baby, though there have been good periods. She has a regular night time routine, goes to bed 7.30 - 8pm, bath, story, no screen time after tea. She gets into bed, we have a quick chat about her day and how she's feeling, hug, lights out.
But increasingly she just does not seem to be able to switch off. She says she can't stop her thoughts - she says they are not all bad / anxious thoughts, though we do talk about those, but also some happy / excited ones.
We have tried to teach her breathing techniques, and to get her to think calm thoughts (we ask her to choose some - she usually says butterflies flying around flowers, sometimes the wind in the trees). But nothing seems to work. Last night she went to sleep at 11pm.
We are worried about her health and wellbeing of course- especially when she's back at school. Also it's having an impact on us (me and my DH) - we are getting no down time in the evening, just going in and out of her room every ten minutes for hours every night. It's like it used to be when she was a baby. And we are exhausted and not always dealing with it as well as we should - i.e. getting grumpy and short tempered.
Any advice at all would be really welcome. I am very open to the possibility that we could be dealing with this better! It's really hard to get perspective, especially when we are so tired all the time. Thanks!