16 year old with bipolar

Hello,
She is on one lexapro and 2 lamictil when she gets up. 2 more lamicil at 4pm then is supposed to take one more lamictil before bed, but she isn't feeling any better on that and I am not seeing anything different. She's been as symptomatic as ever lately!
She is worse without the lamicitl though. (sp)
We have had meetings with school, yes They are concerned about her. She is in private because I work in the school, so not sure how that goes with getting IEP's etc...

Great idea, thank you. I understand that now. The thread is 5 pages long, so people will come to it new. I never even thought...

At some point you may want to just start a new thread too. It just seems like things get more disorganized as they get too long.

I don't believe behavior is fixable with meds, unless you zonk the **** out of her. For the second one me and more people have been telling you she needs strong firm boundaries. Maybe you should see a therapist with her to see how can you parent her better.

The poster has made it clear that she has been in therapy with her daughter and that the therapist has said the daughter was not cooperative. That's the problem with kids and therapy; you can't make them cooperate. I don't see anywhere that she is trying to medicate her into behaving better, just trying to find anything that might help. In fact she has expressed interest in learning about DBT and other therapies for the daughter.

I'm not sure why this parent is being blamed so heavily here. We get plenty of family members on here asking questions and they get fair answers as long as they are asking reasonable questions.

Am I completely missing something that this woman is being unreasonable? Because I don't see it. She knows there are problems and have been. She's tried different parenting techniques, she's tried family therapy, it sounds like she's tried individual therapy. She's had a psych eval and done meds per the eval even though they aren't solving the problems very effectively. She's come on here and asked what else to do and we're not helping her.

I certainly wish my parents had noticed something was wrong when I was 16 and that (hd the internet existed back then) that they would have sought out answers any way that was available to them.

Seriously, it's not about "blame" and "fault". It is about what is working and what is not and apparently, since the OP's daughter is not being exactly managable... their current approach is not working.

I was horrified by mention of book about "bipolar child" and how it says you shouldn't really parent bipolar kids. I feel problem with the OP seeming to be afraid of her daughter's reaction, which may be making the problem worse. I am concerned that kids get slapped on label of bipolar, even if their issues are varied and likely something else, and along the bipolar "but she is ill" excuse comes in, reassuring the undesired behaviors and patterns.


Whatever. If OP wants to hear there is a magic combo of meds that will turn her TEENAGER daugther into a perfect kids, that it's not her fault (nobody's fault in fact, eh)... there are apparently plenty people here to give this blanket reassurance.

Nobody has said meds are the answer, much less that they will give her a perfect daughter. But she needs constructive advice, specific things to research or try that are things she hasn't attempted already.

We can't know her daughter, just like we can't know one another. We have to take her word that her daughter has bipolar and that the assessments were well-done, just the same as we have to do for one another. I imagine that there are people on this board who are diagnosed with bipolar who don't have it. In fact we had a woman on here not long ago who was diagnosed and further follow-up showed it was an error. I'm sure there are others. But for now each of us is diagnosed with bipolar and we just have to trust each other that this is our issue (for all we know some of us could have no diagnosis at all but enjoy stirring up trouble or something so participate in this board) and that we are doing what we say we are doing. I don't see a difference with trusting this mother to report what she is doing and what hasn't worked.