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!

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Accommodations Finalized

We had the "final" IEP meeting today, with the school psychologist, social worker, school nurse, head of special ed and three of her teachers in attendance.  Caroline was supposed to be there but I preferred she wasn't this time because I wanted to talk about her freely as opposed to the last IEP meeting which she attended.  Basically, my assessment of the meeting on a scale of 1 to 10 was a 10, as usual.  This school's IEP team rocks.  We were able to come up with many accommodations including extra time on tests and extra time to compete assignments.

Even so, I am really disheartened by the end of quarter grades.  She ended up with three Ds, two Cs and two Bs.  I am discouraged by her inability to keep all the balls in the air at the same time.  As soon as she focuses on bringing up her grade in one class, she loses focus on her other classes.  One of the accommodations may be to drop one or two of her classes and to add in a resource period with the special ed head to provide some more oversight for her academics.  That could be a good idea.

Honestly, I am just tired of dealing with this today.   Riding an emotional roller coaster all the time when you have a bp kid gets old.

To top it all off, the reduction of the Lithium to address the vision/dizziness/headaches has resulted in a manic swing, so today she went off on a kid in PE and she has been verbally belligerent tonight, very easily irritated and angry.  Tomorrow we will go back to the previous dose of Lithium .  I made another psychiatry appointment for Monday.

Tomorrow we have parent/teacher conferences at the high school.  My husband will try to get with Caroline's teachers and I will go to see Jane's teachers.  Thankfully Jane and Mae are both doing just fine in school so that is something to be grateful for.


2 comments:

marythemom said...

We use a combination of Trileptal and Lamictal which has no observable side effects in my kids. Trileptal alone wasn't enough, but the combination works well for them. Lamictal has a scary potential side effect (fatal rash), but the results have been amazing!

So glad your school is accommodating her needs! What a blessing!

Megan said...

Yes, Lamictal has been great for Caroline as an antidepressant. Trileptal made her much calmer and happier.