The Bipolar Child
How many of us parents thinks our child has ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)? If our kids drops out of several school, does not want to attend class, and we do not see anything wrong other than they just don’t want to, we tend to suspect our child as having the syndrome of ADHD. And so, we enroll our kid at the best school for that sydrome, only to be called by the headmaster of the school for your toddler attacked his teacher with a pencil!
Papolos, co-author of the Bipolar Child studied 300 bipolar kids ages 4 to 18 and was able to establish a characteristic pattern. Our kids in the morning are really difficult to rouse in the morning. But once, they have risen up, most of them can fend for themselves. They usually brush their teeth alone and occassionally needs assistance with dressing up and taking a bath. With bipolar children, they are difficult to rouse from sleep. They resist getting up, getting dressed and even heading to school. They are either irritable with a tendency to snap and gripe, or sullen and withdrawn.
By midday, the darkness lifts and the child becomes wild, wired, euphoric in a giddy and strained way. They laugh too loudly when they find something funny and go on long after the joke is over. Their type of play has an aggressive quality to it. It is quite normal for children to pretend they are superheroes but to insist that they have superhuman abilities is entirely a different thing. They resist all efforts to pacify them when they throw tantrums whenever their wants are denied. Such wildness often continues deep into the night, which explains their difficulty of waking up in the morning. Quite difficult to believe but these children’s manifestations are like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The next question a concerned parent may have will be, how did my child/son/ daughter developed it? Most scientists says it is genetically connected but there are other factos that sets of the bipolar fuse. One of the biggest contributing factor is drugs. Drugs connected with this disorder are amphetamines, coccaines and stimulants. Let us not discount the ever present Stress. Many of the psychiatric conditions are precipitated by life’s conditions such as divorce, death or even a happy rite of passage such as entering college.
Though some of us may not be genetically predisposed to this disorder, there are certain things we do t as parents, that we could be likely contributors to our child development of this disorder. Did you ever impose something to your child and yet you yourself broke it? One of the classic example is having your child sleep in the afternoon. But as a parent, you’re too concerned that he might develop diaper rash and go on change his diaper thereby disrupting his sleep. Families that do a lot of travel should take time to consider the implications of time zone differences to their children. This disrupts sleeping pattern which is the usual cause of sleep deprivation.
Clearly, there is something in the environment that contributes to a child as well as a growing teenager’s possibility of developing bipolar disorder, not just genes. Raise a child in a steady and stable home and reduce the odds that illness will gain a toehold. Another strategy is to avoid too much negatively expressed emotion. “Tough love is a good idea in principle but it sometimes do more than good especially if it make kids feel worse about themselves,” says Psychology Professor David Miklowitz of the University of Colorado. When family arguments cannot be avoided, they need to be conducted in a controlled way. Most importantly, we must be the eyes and ears of our children. A teenager in depression cannot see the hope beyond the gloom. A child can’t see the quiet reality behind the giddiness. We must be sensitive enough to our kids’ unspoken needs. Our children can be taught how to seek our help, much like Oddyseus in Homer’s Oddyssey. When blown off course, he sought the help of his crew. As parents, our compasses are much more reliable and we must be ready to show our children the way.
Photo by fyunkie
