well my mother is bipolar and unmedicated. She is the main reason I don't have and NEVER will have kids. I cannot ever take the chance of being as damaging to my children as she was to us.

My brother absolutely hates her because she refuses help and was so abusive to us because of her mood swings. I did my best to protect him from the brunt of it but watching her didn't really do a lot of good. He has major PTSD from all the fighting she and I did. There were a couple other contributing factors but she and I were mainly it. Because of being so volatile he doesn't trust people and has severe social anxiety because he always expects people to go from being normal to freaking out.

Picture getting woke up at 3 am on a school night to go have a snowball fight because she's manic. The snow is magical and she wants to play. But because you are 8 at the time you are a bit cranky at getting woke up at 3 am. Then you get the stuffing knocked out of you because she just wanted to play and you were as always ungrateful Crap like that happened all the time. She could be brushing my hair and telling me how much she loved me then abruptly shove me into the floor because she was done. Her mood had shifted and I was now a burden. And when you are a kid you don't understand why after having several good months with mom now she hates you and is depressed and wants to die or why she's bouncing off the walls and gets angry in the blink of an eye. I think I love her as much as I'm capable but she definitely impacted my ability to connect with and care about other people. I still help her and do what I can for her but I definitely resent her.

My sister was just like my mom and refused help/meds and is no longer with us.

The only good thing about my mom being who she is...is that I've always been very aware of my mood swings and done my best to stay on meds when i can afford them. She taught me who I wanted to be and that's the exact opposite of her.

Not saying all bipolar parents are like her just that she was horrible.