About our Daughter

I am mother to four wonderful daughters, ages 17, 19, 21, and 23, and wife to the greatest husband on earth. God has given us a special child to raise one who was diagnosed with early-onset bipolar disorder at the age of seven, though she showed signs of it from the age of fifteen months. She also has ADHD, Sensory Integration Disorder (sensory seeking), Dyslexia, and Non-Verbal Learning Disorder-NOS, all typical comorbidities for a bipolar child. In spite of the trials, she enjoys lacrosse, running (finished her first marathon in October of 2014!), and reading and writing her own books. I will share with you the many joys and sorrows we have faced and will face in the future with the hope that you may find better understanding about this mental illness caused by both chemical and structural abnormalities in the brain. I desire that you will be encouraged by this blog if you are also dealing with a bipolar child. Thank you for reading and sharing in our journey.

How Did You Know She Was Bipolar So Young?

I wrote a long explanation of how we came to this bipolar diagnosis in a child so young under my post of March 19th of 2009. If your child or a child you know bears similarities, please seek out a good psychiatrist and don't wait for "things to get better." Often they will simply get worse, and the longer a child is unmedicated, the more damage their brain can accrue. Early diagnoses and treatment are key to providing these children with a chance at a successful life later as a teen and an adult.
Never change, start or stop a medication without the approval of your child's physician!

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Rediscovering our Marriage

One of the nicest advantages to having Caroline away this summer is that I have rediscovered that I HAVE A HUSBAND.  It's as if I suddenly noticed that I have this wonderful man that I had forgotten about.  We had become caricatures of ourselves, or maybe just lost a whole lot of ourselves while putting out fires for the last ten years.  I had become so sad whenever I looked at him.  He always looked completely stressed out and angry, short-tempered, nothing of the funny, fun-loving, relaxed positive guy that I fell in love with eighteen years ago.  Now I see him and I think, "Oh, yeah, he has needs too, and I have not been meeting them at all!"  We had become short with each other, no time for romance or date nights.  The humor seemed to have left us.  That's a bad thing when you can't laugh together anymore.  

Well, we are laughing again.  I am seeing again how beautiful his eyes are, this wonderful blue-green with yellow speckles.  His face is so much more relaxed.  We went out to dinner for our anniversary and had a great time being pretty goofy.  He's goofy at heart.  Life has made us way too serious.  We need to just walk on the beach together, run together, go out more.  We really enjoyed our weekend away to see Caroline last month--we haven't been  away from our kids for more than one night, and we had three!  

I want to bless him.  I truly do.  I went kind of overboard for Father's Day.  I spent way more than I ever have on this occasion, and more than I should have, but I feel like I spend time and money on everyone else's needs, even my own, and he gets the dregs.  So he opened a lot of presents.  I was happy to see him so pleased.  And now I am realizing that his giftedness which is acts of service I miss completely when the laundry is not done and he can't find anything in the morning, or when the house is disheveled.  He does a lot for me all the time, but I need to remember that it is the little things that mean a lot to him.

So we need to really take advantage of this time without being caregivers all the time.  She may come back before the end of the summer, and I don't want to have wasted this time we have been given!

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