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Summary: Considered the Bipolar Bible by many parents
Review: The Bipolar Child has been a great help to our family. Reading it opened our eyes to all the mistakes that were made by the doctors with our two Bipolar/ADHD boys. The ADHD diagnose came first and they would not even consider Bipolar even though we told them it ran in our family. This book told me WHY our boys got worse on Ritalin, Adderall and Paxil even though they seemed to get better at first. Even though I had the first edition, I had to buy the second edition as soon as it came out. I have lent out my old copy to parents that were wondering about their child and suggested that they get the new edition.
Another good book is Matt the Moody Hermit Crab by Caroline McGee. It is a short story about a young bipolar crab and how bipolar affects his family and his friends at school. It is a good book to help the children understand just how bipolar can affect the family. It is also helpful for adults to read.
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Summary: This Book Helped Us Take Charge
Review: This is the penultimate book on this emerging subject and diagnosis and was recommended to us by a consulting physician. This book helped us understand the effects of this illness on the patient as well as the family and provided tremendous current information and resources on alternatives. We had our son in a therapeutic school and based on their recommendations had put him through 2 different regimens of antidepressants. From this book, we learned that antidepressants are the wrong thing to give a bipolar patient and why. It helped us identify what we were seeing, how our actions were aggravating the situation and gave us the tools to take charge. While we ultimately found that the diagnosis applied mildly and partially, this book helped us deal with that. It gave us the depth necessary to evaluate the things that several different physicians and social workers were saying to us, and to identify that that particular therapeutic school had become "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for our son. While we intuitively believed that they has exhausted their usefulness, it was hard to argue with so-called professionals when their explanation corresponded to the observable data. Thanks to this book, we finally figured out that much of the information we were receiving was worse than worthless - it was harming him. It helped us identify the information that was actually useful and figure out what was right for our family. Our son is better now. Even though he is but a mild bipolar, if that, this material helped us make the right decisions for out family. We identified how the school was making things worse, pulled him out of that hell-hole and worked with our school district to meet his needs. This book changed our lives.
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Summary: Thank you is not enough!!!!
Review: There are no words to express how helpful this book has been and will be. Thank you for seeing the need and filling it.
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Summary: I found out that I was not alone
Review: I am the mother of a 17-year-old bipolar daughter, who was diagnosed one year ago. The chapter "The Impact on the Family" made me feel so much better when I realized that the horror and embarassment that my family had been living through was not uniquely ours. At that point I did not personally know anyone else who was struggling with the violent temper tantrums and debilitating depression of a bipolar teen. I review parts of this book when I get discouraged.
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Summary: Excellent Information!
Review: This book gives a very detailed and understandable look at the life of a Bipolar child. It is a useful resource for anyone involved with a child with this disorder. I found it so useful that I purchased a copy for our son's school to keep on hand as a reference. In response to the person who wrote that this is a "fad" diagnosis and that the onset of Bipolar does not appear until age 20-30 and should be rare in children... new medical studies show new information everyday on all kinds of diseases and disorders. Speaking from my own childhood and experiences in life (later being correctly diagnosed as Bipolar), it is very possible and likely that children are also Bipolar! Your view on this subject, while your opinion, is a very misguided and uneducated view. I only hope that you are not in a medical profession where a true misjustice could be done to many children needing help. I am thankful for authors like these who took the time and did the research that will help so many children and adolescents to live a more fulfilling life!
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Summary: Wish this book had been around when my son was 3
Review: While many people believe that Bipolar disorder cannot be diagnosed in children, the psychiatric community is now determining that many times the diagnosis' that were given as ADHD have been incorrect and were actually the behaviors of Childhood Onset Bipolar Disorder. While I knew my child was Bipolar because of family history, I could not convince the professionals who were "helping us" and I did not know what I was supposed to do to help him. I wish this book had been around when my son was three years old and could have guided my husband and I. We went through years of dysfunctional behavior, spiraling downward until we could no longer cope with our child's behavior and finally sent him to a therapeutic residential school for 2 1/2 years beginning at age 12 1/2. While suicide is the ultimate loss of a child, sending them away in the hopes that they will get their head together, never knowing if the therapy will take, always wondering if people are being kind to your child, missing important stages of development, not sharing those few moments of sunlight and happiness that you can snatch when they are in a good mood, is devastating. My heart felt as if it had been ripped out of my chest and I was a walking zombie for the first year and one-half. People who say that parents and teachers can "manage" this type of child without the appropriate medications and think that the average onset is still in adulthood are fooling themselves and doing irreparable harm to their children. Had this book been available 12 1/2 years ago, our story might have been different. Our child might have been able to stay at home and share our lives instead of being sent away because we could no longer "manage" him. Don't fool yourselves-learn all that you can about this disorder and this book will help you start that steep learning curve.
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Summary: An inside look
Review: This book finally explained our children on an emotional level my husband understood. After feeling like a not very sucessful translator between my children and their father, we are finally operating out of thr same "map". This is the most useful book I have ever purchased.
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Summary: Mother recommends book -- insights into daughter
Review: This book was greatly needed and enlightening. My daughter is now a person that I can appreciate more dearly, and advocate for more forcefully. For years I could not motivate her, rouse her in the morning, nor help her organize her thoughts or life. I felt that with each passing year she was becoming "unteachable" and oppositional. All of the coping skills I had learned over the years were far beyond her capability to incorporate or understand. One therapist had told me when she was in 5th grade that "I was going to lose her," but only after reading this book do I fully comprehend what she meant. If you have or know of anyone who lives with or works with children that seem so creative, yet so easily frustrated and quite unable to "reach their potential" then I recommend this book. I do not believe that every child with emotional difficulties has bipolar tendencies or the early onset bipolar disorder. However, after 11 years of searching for some truth and method of addressing my daughter's needs I think that any parent, teacher, doctor, psychologist, politician or insurance manager should read this book. The educational insights are compassionate and applicable to a wide range of children. The medications and the disorder are demystified. Although one chapter is very technical and geared towards the professionals or those with degrees in science the majority is readable and contains a wealth of information. This book is a must have resource for all elementary level guidance counselors at the very least. The emotional and financial impacts on families and society are so large and we can prevent needless suffering, addictions, suicides and warehousing of acting out adolescents in jails through addressing these disorders earlier.
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Summary: Dangerous
Review: While a small number of children most certainly do suffer from a variety of crippling mental illnesses as severe of Bipolar Disorder, parents and professionals alike are bound by reason and ethics to carefully consider how we manage the problems that our children encounter as they grow up. Reading The Bipolar Child saddens me, as it marks the trend in recent years of professionals abandoning careful assessment (thank you, Managed Care) and leaping to treatment without lending a troubled child the time it takes to understand where their troubles come from. These are only a few of the issues that I take with this book: All children display a range of problem behavior and, in fact, some show more problem behavior than others. This does not mean that they have some sort of "chemical imbalance" that many pediatricians and psychiatrists tout as the rationale for placing kids on powerful drugs. Normal variations in temperament and difficult children have never, until about the last 10 years, warranted medical treatment as the first line of defense. Much like exercise and diet are the initial steps in the standards of care for diabetes, helping parents and teachers understand and better manage these disruptive child behaviors should be done before, and not after, a child is placed on a mix of antipsychotics, mood stabilizers and/or anticonvulsants, antidepressants, and stimulants (yes, this is a typical cocktail for the "Bipolar" child). Further supporting this notion that we need ti take a more conservative and child-centered approach to treatment is the rising rate of diagnosis and treatment of Bipolar in children. In many areas, kids are being diagnosed with this disorder at rates 2-3 times that of adults. And mind you, as Bipolar disorder is chronic (never goes away after its onset), and its average age of onset is 20 to 30 years, it SHOULD be VERY VERY rare in children. It is not and this sign of the times is a clear warning that we must approach child behavior problems with much more care than has become the standard. ... If you are the parent of a troubled child, remember that whatever new fad diagnosis your child is given by her/his pediatrician in the next 15-minute visit, you, the parent, wield the greatest influence by learning more about managing problem behavior and putting that knowledge into action. Whether you accept this diagnosis or not, the problems are still real and still require your attention. Just act responsibly and understand that the "experts" (including pediatricians, psychiatrists, neurologists, and other M.D.s) are backed by nearly zero research evidence and know little more than you.
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Summary: Outstanding Book Helps Parents Navigate In All Ways
Review: From explanations of brain chemistry to how to handle the school district and your insurance carrier, this books is a MUST for all parents. Having just come through 3 years of struggling with a 14 year old just diagnosed as bi-polar and fighting to get correct diagnosis, educational resources on board through an IEP and fighting with the insurance company, to navigating wilderness camps, hospitalizations and the lonliness of not having a normal life, this book helped me realize that I had done a lot of it right and yet provided infinitely more resources. For example, the cutting edge research in brain chemistry is moving in directions which in the near future can hopefully provide gentler kinder supplements to help balance mood. Check out anit-aging web sites as well as search on authors and subject matter discussed in their book. In any event their advice on school district and insurance company matters are right on. I live in California, am an attorney and it still was a tremendous challenge to get up to speed on what we needed to do to get special education resources for our son. This book gives the best explanation, includng IEP specifics. Faced with residential placement, having just been approved, the book even helps provide advice on types of schools which would be appropriate and how to prepare for the future. When the diagnosis came 7 weeks ago that my son was bi-polar and I had been through 48 hours of horrible circumstances. A parent called me and explained they too had a child with similar diagnosis and recommended this book. Our educational consultant and our attorney recommended this book. Be sure you find the money to purchase this book, because it will help you find and save your child.
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