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, September 20, 2012

IEP Meeting Went Great, But...

Yesterdays big IEP meeting went great.  I am very impressed with the staff that attended.  Everyone seemed so eager to help Caroline and quite interested in her case.  I couldn't have asked for a better meeting.  The "but" is that she is failing Geometry, has several Ds in other subjects, which are likely due to all the school she has missed in the first five weeks.  Very discouraging to her and to us.  I am meeting with the Geometry teacher this morning to try to ascertain what is going wrong here.  She says he isn't very helpful in terms of his instruction in class.  The Mathnasium tutor spent two hours with her yesterday trying to help her understand the concepts.  She made some real progress there but my concern is why she isn't getting this kind of instruction at school.

Always, always, in the back of our minds are the questions, "Is this the right learning environment for Caroline?  Can she learn and succeed here?  Can she keep up with the pace given all of her bipolar related sick days? When do you pull the plug if it is apparent that she is too discouraged about her grades?"  So many hard questions.  I think we are going to give it a semester and see how accommodating her teachers will be and then decide if a big public high school is the right fit for her or if she needs a much smaller environment.   The last thing we want is for her to be so frustrated with inflexible teachers that she stops caring and gives up. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Real name alert

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to tell you how thankful I am for your blog. My 10yo daughter was recently dx bipolar and adhd. I found your blog and spent 2.5 days reading it. Thank you for being so transparent through the difficult times...and thank you for sharing all of those highs and lows.