I have told the story of my Aj forever now, it’s been three years since we started the fight to find out what was up with him. Our first concern was the lack of sleep, never having slept through the night & always having been an irritable baby {not to be confused with colic, he was just irritable}, we knew lack of sleep meant no possible way to tell if his moods were based on insufficient sleep or a real genetic mood disorder issue.

Aj smiling while dancing with his siblings

Then the whole sleep issue was resolved. Intuniv came on board for ADHD, and well I recently wrote a post about how that went, not so good {link to that intuniv blog post}.  We are now seeing a pediatric psychiatrist and they diagnosed him bipolar, although I believe the diagnosis is something they are not 100% stating out loud, they say he exhibits a majority of the signs of a bipolar child.  I know what bipolar is, a chemical imbalance in your brain, I know what it looks like in a child, my sister is bipolar having not been diagnosed until her early 20′s.

Here is what I know about bipolar:

• It is a chemical imbalance in the brain; meaning it’s not learned, it’s not encouraged and it certainly needs medication as there isn’t a surgery that can fix the chemical imbalance in your brain.
• It can cause suicidal thoughts and actions.
• It can cause the adult or child to do major harm to themselves {cutting, burning their body, etc}.
• It can cause the adult or child to withdraw from society not able to have natural bonding relationships.
• It can create a bitter household with stress for any other children or adults in the home, as well as the adult or child with bipolar because they don’t wish to be this way.
• It is not something a person can control without proper medication and/or therapy.

AJ smiling for a picture

All in all, no matter who wants to say that bipolar is just some condition that a doctor thought up to label kids and adults in order to feed medication to us, you can wipe that thought out of your brain! I lived with a sister, four years younger than me, I have watched all of the suffering she went through, our relationship was extremely difficult and she dealt with a lot of struggles within herself not sure what was “wrong” with her. There is a lot to the story of my sister, but I will not get into all of that, what’s important now is that she grew up with bipolar and I grew up with her therefore we know all too well not having AJ diagnosed with it at the earliest of possible age that he would suffer horribly in life and have a difficult time growing the way a child should be able to grow emotionally.

Thankfully Rispderdal was started four weeks ago and it IS working. Aj is smiling, he has steady moods, the irritability and the anger outbursts are gone. He is loving all of us, he is interacting with the family. Aj still doesn’t like all of the things the rest of us like; such as long walks or being outside for too long, but I will take him having his own unique likes and dislikes over the mood fluctuations. You can not medicate a child because you want him to be more like you, however, you can medicate a child if their mood fluctuations or behavior {not learned behavior} is keeping them from leading a healthy lifestyle both at home and in school.

AJ Having fun in Kiddie Pool with his brother

I am happy to have my son back, so to speak, he was always here but he was underneath the bipolar and his eyes were never really appearing “here”, now when I look at Aj I see life behind his eyes, I see a sparkle and I am so happy that after three long years of testing and fighting with various people, we finally have Aj back to having a real chance at a good life with this bipolar diagnosis and bipolar medication, Risperdal.

I say to you, if you are the parent of a child who you know may have something not quite right going on that you continue the battle, educate yourself, get a doctor you can speak with & trust. Keep fighting for what you feel is right for your child, no matter what the situation is. Just fight for your kids! Life is too short and we are parents for a reason; to assist in allowing our children to grow up happy and healthy so they can lead great adult lives!

0 Flares Twitter 0 Tweet Facebook 0 Google+ 0 Pin It Share 0 LinkedIn 0 StumbleUpon 0 Reddit 0 Email 0 Email to a friend 0 Flares ×