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!

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Sorry for the Lack of Posts

Not really any particular reason.  Summer busy-ness I guess.  All is ok.  I don't think I can ever say great, right?  We are just kind of bumping along.  Caroline is taking summer school Geometry which isn't going that well.  She loves her new teacher, but the class is only three weeks long for one semester of Geometry, and it is too fast for her.  She might be retaking it again in the fall.

I think we are 99.9% sure we are homeschooling next year, using the district's online high school.  She was so stressed out last year, and so were we.  Wasn't worth it.  And she had seriously the best IEP team in the country I would vouch.  But a big public high school wasn't the right fit, and the small self-contained special ed classroom would not have been the right fit either as the kids were pretty intellectually challenged.   She is entirely relieved.  I worry about her taking the SATs next year, but we will be enlisting a tutor beginning in August.

Medically she started running a little "high," which looks like obsessiveness for her, so she is taking a bit more lithium.  But she is also going to be going on thyroid medication as she is clinically low (probably caused by the lithium,) which accounts for the low energy and sleepiness she has experienced all year.

She has played some summer lacrosse, but not much at all compared to usual.  Her knee is nearly 100% better following surgery.  There is a fall league she might join up in Denver.  I know she is longing to really scrimmage.

I hope your summer is going ok.  Summer can be hard, or really good, it would seem.  Caroline often does best in the summer.  Maybe it is the lack of school stress, or the sunny days.  I too do better with lots of sun.  That is one of the reasons we jumped at the chance to move to Colorado.  Despite the cold, it is sunny most of the time.

Talk to you soon!