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!

Thursday, October 1, 2009

We Are Making the Move

Mae is starting back at the private school she was at last year on Monday. You don't know how much relief this has brought me. We have a lot of work to do with her, but having her home all day was exhausting me to the point of panic attacks at the start of each morning. Jane will be my homeschool buddy. That will be fun, I know. She like to be at home with me and is so easy to school.

Caroline is having a hard time at school with her Spanish class. The teacher seems to have anger issues, and poor teaching methods. I normally side with teachers because I think a lot of parents take their kids' side when they need to support the teacher. But Caroline has told me this teacher curses at them, tells them to shut up, and has some pretty unrealistic ideas of how fast a kid can memorize foreign words in five minutes, and then be quizzed. Caroline has very low processing speed and a poor working memory, so this is impossible for her. She has failed the same quiz twice and was crying over the fact that she would likely fail tomorrow. I decided this was not acceptable, and called the principal to share my concerns, nicely of course. He was quite surprised and apologetic and said he would look into this right away. I really like this guy a lot. If Caroline starts to dread going to school because of this Spanish teacher, that would be awful. I will request that she do Rosetta stone on her own if they don't remove this teacher (if she doesn't change her ways).


5 comments:

Accidental Expert said...

Good for you Mom. Your really know how your kids learn best and stand up for what's right.

Anonymous said...

I hope the school really will do something about that mean teacher! THere are many jobs that you can do well even if you hate doing them... but teaching is not one of those jobs! You either love it, or you leave it! It sounds like this lady may be ready to leave it!

Anonymous said...

Hopefully the school will do something about this teacher! There are some jobs that you can do well even if you hate doing them. Teaching is not one of those! You either love it, or leave it! It sounds like this lady needs to leave it!

Corrie Howe said...

I hope things work out with Caroline's Spanish teacher. I had a bad experience in my Spanish class in high school. How do you find Rosetta Stone? I have it in Spanish, but I can't seem to make time to use it. I have a number of Spanish CDs I've transfered to my iPod, and am learning a little this way. I really want to learn more so I can keep in touch with our Spanish Exchange student who lived with us last year.

Megan said...

Thanks, everyone for your encouragment. The principal talked to the Spanish teacher, and I don't know yet what came of it. I hope the cursing stops. Caroline is now really behind in Spanish because she didn't tell us how much she wasn't getting.

Rosetta stone has worked great for my kids because they like it and it corrects them immediately. I don't have time to use it with them, even though each lesson is only fifteeen minutes long or so. It's just one more thing. I would like to brush up on my Russian, and maybe with Mae in school I could.