Hi Vickie,

I feel for you. I had most of the issues you talked about in my childhood too, except for I was more introverted and my brother was more extroverted. I was more excitable and happy and extroverted at home, however. My brother and I have equally high intelligence, but he was more artistic whereas I was more verbal. We both put on plays for my parents, however. He did beautiful accurate drawings, I wrote short stories and poems.

I believe my brother is also bipolar, but self medicating. He goes through periods of being excitable and extroverted and happy and losing weight (like me), but then has periods of depression where he doesn't want to go out, plays video games and packs on the pounds (similar to me except for the weight gain). He abuses both alcohol and drugs and hasn't gone to a psychiatrist since he left the court ordered program. He fooled the p-doc into thinking everything was fine. I think he also has a personality disorder like anti-social. Anyway, all this to say, my brother got into more trouble than I, but I was always going through these flips in childhood, where as far as I can tell my brother didn't. He was almost always outgoing and didn't start getting depressed too until his latter teen years.

My bipolar was almost from the start. I'd be hyper and silly and get in trouble at school (until about 2nd grade) for not being able to sit still or stop talking or being overly affectionate, then I'd get punished and turn all quiet and sad. The sadness got stronger after about age 7 and mostly replaced what would now be called ADD or ADHD. I still had trouble hearing teachers' instructions when I was really into a project and also got punished for that. It was like I was constantly getting reprimanded or beaten for being me. That only made my depression deeper.

So I think that bipolar probably does start in some people in early childhood, but it depends on their chemistry and the kind of trauma they encountered and their reaction to that trauma. My brother had similar traumas, but he kept their results pretty well hidden until he was 18-19 and beyond. Me, I didn't know why I went through the hyper moods and then back to depressed such that even close friends wouldn't recognize me at times, because they were used to the depressed cynical me, not this zest for life me that couldn't stop laughing.

You know how it is. I'm sure there are studies going on now about childhood bipolar, but the results just aren't conclusive or out yet. Let's hope our experiences are validated. I can see why the medical community would be hesitant to announce that bipolar in children is similar to ADD or ADHD. The reason being that it would terrify the already upset parents of these children that they might grow into having a lifelong and worse problem with heightened symptoms that they could never outgrow as is the case quite often with the other diagnoses. And some do only have ADD or ADHD. It's difficult to tell the two apart, except for the in between periods of depression. Maybe I should be on Ritalin. Even with all my bipolar meds I still find it hard to sit still.

We know what happened and that's what's important. I think bipolar people are typically creative and intelligent. It may be one of those bundled genes like red hair and freckles...that are seldom severed because they are so close to each other on their various chromosomes. Just a thought.