my 5 year old DD sounds very similar. often times over the years she has lost it over the simplest of things. she needs to have things explained to her in detail if there is going to be a change of plans. she likes things to go the way she THINKS they are going to pan out. when she was a toddler i used to have to explain to her in detail that i was going to work when i dropped her off at day care. she would listen intently and calm down when i had explained. her day careres commented that she was the only child they had seen who actually listend so much and understood what i was saying to her.

for a long time i couldnt understand why sometimes she would become upset at drop off times ( be that to kindy, ballet, kids parties, mothers group) and other times she would be fine. i eventually realised (as she grew and had language to tell me) that she doesnt like showing up to places when there are already a lot of people there. this means we have to be there about 5 mins early so she can slowly get used to the amount of people coming.

over the years we have had nightmares, lip biting, headaches, emotional breakdowns over simple things all of which come and go. she tends to worry a lot about certain things. i dont know if she has an anxiety disorder of some kind but i do know that GPs, my parents, her teachers etc dont think there is a problem and that she seems to show all these anxious signs at home and not at school/kindy. she is outgoing, has heaps of friends etc so she isnt shy (most of the time).

i also know that she has a realy really good memory, she is quite advanced with her school work, reached her milestones really quickly etc. i have been trying to get her into a resilency workshop which gives kids coping skills, techniques they can use to identify anxiousness behaviours and episodes coming on and skills to help them settle down etc. however, there is only one program i know of here that does that and they keep putting me off due to lack of numbers. it is a really frustrating thing to know deep down that my daughter could benefit from something like this but i am unable to find a suitable program.

not sure if that was helpful to you at all, infact it probaby wasnt. sorry! :-) the only thing i would suggest is to trust yourself and to seek out some kind of resiliency program and if you find a good one let me know about it. :-)