[trippinmickey]

Do you have kids ? Do you ever think what if my kids have bipolar.I have 5 kids myself and kids can be very moody and manic on their own specially in their teens .So how do you tell I wish someone would have got me help 20 years earlier .Do you worry about your kids?

[Moose372]

Yeah. I have three kids and they can be moody anyway- at 10, 8, and 6. ((Though not really the youngest. He takes everything in stride. Until someone ignores him for long enough. lol) I wouldn't want them to go through this. Its bad enough they have to see ME go through it.

[BertsBarbieDoll]

I also have 5 kids. Yes I worry about them. Especially 16 yo dd. I already know she is bipolar. Undiagnosed. I don't think children should be on psych meds. Just my personal opinion. She knows she's bipolar, and we have other ways of handling her mood swings. When they get bad, or she gets older, we will get her diagnosed. Right now, she has the right to walk away from any situation that is a trigger for her. My other kids walk away from me when I am chewing on them, I will cause them bodily injury. She locks herself in her room and stays as long as necessary. Before we figured out that she is bipolar, and before she had options, she tried to kill her brother.....litterally. There is a body shaped indention in the wall in my hallway. She nearly put him thru the wall.

~BARB~

[Schatje]

I have two kids and I try not to worry too much. Just because I'm bipolar doesn't mean they will be. After all, they have their dad in them too. I believe it is my job to be observant of their moods and behaviors, be open with them about bipolar, be honest with them about my experiences, and to get them help if they end up needing it. I am of the belief that if I want to have a better chance at having my kids be open and honest with me about bipolar I need to show them the same courtesy and set a good example.

Bipolar isn't a death sentence. It just means that our lives won't be easy and we are going to have times that downright suck, but we are in good company with people like Buzz Aldrin, Hans Christian Andersen, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Tim Burton, Lord Byron, Agatha Christie, Winston Churchill, Rosemary Clooney, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, Cary Grant, John Keats, Abraham Lincoln, Isaac Newton, Florence Nightingale, Plato, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Woolf to name just a few.