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!

Monday, June 27, 2011

To Text or Not to Text...

The whole phenomenon of teen texting has us in a conundrum.  Ideally, or maybe idealistically, we would like to tell Caroline she absolutely can't have texting for all kinds of reasons, period, end of discussion.  But the big problem with that is that for her this is truly her "lifeline" to the world outside of her home, to friends on her lacrosse teams or the pool, or at whatever classes she might be taking.   Because she has so few social options at this point, her interactions with peers are limited to phone conversations and texting, primarily texting.  She has asked for a Facebook page but I don't know if we are ready to open up that can of worms now.  But then again Facebook allows us to see immediately and quite conveniently what she is posting and what others are posting on her page every day.  Texting is harder for us to follow, as messages can be erased quickly and it is harder for us to get her phone away from her to read everything.  This world of techno savvy teens can't just be ignored.  She will be electronically connected to people but we have to help her figure out how to do that and still maintain integrity and good judgement.  Our oldest daughter, while enormously trustworthy on many fronts, has even had some Facebook postings and pics that prompted our criticism, not always because of what she posted, but because of what other people who had lesser standards posted.   The pitfalls for a bipolar teen are even more abundant.  Sigh.  I wish we lived in a simpler world.  But then again we wouldn't have all of the medical resources we have right now, so I would still take the 21st century over another time.   We do know that we will not allow Caroline to have her cell phone in school next year.  The school is tiny and if there is an emergency, I know we can be reached. We just cannot risk another mania-inspired inappropriate text resulting in her getting the boot.  I am ready for the loud protestations.  Our youngest Mae will be under the same rules if and when she gets a phone.
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1 comment:

Meg said...

I feel your pain. Texting and cell phones in general are on ongoing issue for us. We have completely banned Facebook on all of our computers because that was a mess with my son and his friends. At present my son does not have a phone and has to use mine but even so it's an ongoing issue over here and I'm sure always will be.

June 29, 2011 at 11:03 AM

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