Dear Claudia Grace,

You are 8 years old, skinny, long blond hair and freckles all over your nose. You look a little like an angel that may or may not have raided the sweetie jar, depends who's asking. People call you a Barbie doll and exclaim how wonderful you are. I smile and nod, and watch whilst you shy away from their hands as they try to stroke you, grimace and theatrically wipe your face after their kiss. I want to say - and frequently do, "Wait until she opens her mouth." or "Yeah, in public."

You are a beautiful, loved, clever and artistic little girl and you must never think otherwise, but I have to tell you that your father and I have come close to 'losing' you in public places, tripping you up down stairs or even feeding you to the dogs before. You are what I have come to know as a "easily frustrated, chronically inflexible" child.

I found that in a parenting book. Usually I avoid such things like the plague, but after I had shown your father and we had both fallen about laughing at such a wonderfully apt and politely put description of you, I did buy the book and read it from cover to cover. It has some great ideas and goes to some length to tell me that I am not a failure as a parent, so I am a huge fan. We've gone ahead with some of the techniques and got a great response from you. The idea is that we define the problem, you define your problem, we decide why it's a problem and then we come up with some workable solutions together. So far this has worked fab. We have started with your inability to go to sleep. We have agreed that you cannot, indeed, go to sleep. We have discussed and identified around ten potential reasons why, and decided it's not them. You aren't too hot or too cold. Your bed is comfortable. Your pillow is fine. It's not too quiet, too noisy, too dark or too light. I come away from our discussion feeling joyful; we have talked about it with no screaming or crying! It's not until five minutes later I realise that we've not actually got anywhere. Back to Google.

Actually, it's still pretty good. You have three major problems. (I know this because your father and I spent an hour compiling a list the book gave us) You don't sleep. You don't eat. And you, roughly boiled down, have a fear of failure complex. We are convinced that if we can get you to sleep, most of the rest will solve itself. This seems to have played out these last few weeks of holiday when you have been able to sleep in in the morning. When less tired, you are more open to trying food, better tempered and have a better appetite. Of course, one big problem is that it might be your poor diet that causes your inability to sleep.

So our commitment is that we are going to fix it. I have looked into insomnia and its treatments. Basically, anything that causes you to sleep, ie, pills, should be a last resort and not used for extended periods of time. So there goes our plan of drugging you until you're 18. Insomnia cannot be treated, rather the underlying reasons for it need to be identified and treated. There is a possibility that lifestyle is a factor. However, we have been trying to overcome this for nearly a year now and have tried all the fixes. Melatonin, magnesium, lavender, massage, white noise, background music, no light, soothing light, bath before bed. No screens before bed, reading together, early nights, late nights, starting off in our bed, supper, no supper, milk... The only thing we noticed made a difference was that when we concentrated on the problem it stressed you out so much that it got worse. So we backed off completely and left you to your own devices as long as you were quiet. Sometimes you were asleep when we got to bed, sometimes not. We all got on a lot better so it has stayed thus until one of us can work out how the hell we sort it out.

We are down to diet or therapy, although we are going to give a fish tank a go in the meantime. We have to make you eat properly and see if it helps. If not, I am going to have to get you psychologically wotsitated for depression or anxiety. Neither of us will be surprised if you suffer from either, you have always been a tightly strung, wound up person. Everything is personal and you often overreact to situations. Nevertheless, we hope it doesn't come to that! So, diet it is. We will see how that goes.....