Jennifer,

I'm glad that you are able to see that your daughter has bipolar. When I was reading the things that she does, I could see what my sister use to do when she was young. It's just that my parents couldn't see the problems with bipolar at that time. Maybe it's because they were too busy worrying about my epilepsy at that time.

Since nothing was done to help my sister, her daughter now has bipolar and it started at a younger age. My sister and her daughter can no longer get along with one another. My niece is now pregnant and the father doesn't even know that she's pregnant. Along with that, she doesn't have a job and still wants to keep the baby. She even quit taking her meds so her bipolar is just making things worse.

My sister still won't accept that she has bipolar, but anxiety runs on my fathers side of the family and my sister has been having migraines for quite some time. Now that she's taking paxil for panic attacks, that should also calm down the migraines. I'm sure the doctor will do some testing on the bipolar also.

My sister also threw temper tamtrums when she was young. If things didn't go her way and my parents sent her to her room, she got mad and through things at the walls until she started crying. I now wish that my parents had done something more for her. They just didn't realize that this was a real problem and that something more needed to be done. My mother is finally beginning to accept the fact now that there was more of a problem than what they though back then.

I'm glad that you are looking into doing something more for your child. The earlier you can start, the sooner this can be worked on and, hopefully, she'll have a better life than what my sister and niece went through.

Becky