How I knew…
This is the hard part to write. How to explain how I knew something was wrong… but here we go. When Tre was just a baby he had incredible anxiety, especially about me not being close. He would be sound asleep and I would leave the room, not three steps down the hall and he would wake up screaming. Like an alarm went off in his head, alerting him that I was no longer close enough.
As he got older, crawling and walking, I couldn’t do dishes without him standing there crying the whole time. It was hard to do anything but I would just wait for a nap. Honestly, I didn’t realize how “odd” this was, until I had my second child. When I saw the capacity Dominic had for entertaining himself, or just being alone, I was really shocked!
By two he was defiant but expectantly. I really never suspected anything other than strong willed, up until he was about three and a half. He had major temper tantrums. Just out of the blue out of the tiniest things. It was like he had missed having fits at two and was making up for lost time. We would be in the store and he would just have a total meltdown, laying on the floor in the middle of Walmart, and of course NO ONE would mind their own business! Thank you for the kind advice people of walmart!
We had just moved, and had our second son, so once again I suspected it was the change, jealousy, or perhaps I was letting him down on some level. So, I tried harder, I spent more time outside with him, hoping he could run out some of that little boy energy.
When he started biting me, bruising me, and hurting me, and I had to physically restrain him, I knew I needed help. One day (at 4) he cried “Mommy hold me down, the monster is coming” he felt he had a monster inside himself. No one had ever called him a monster, it was his own interpretation of what was going on. I sat, holding him, crying. Then I set up an appointment with a child psychologist.
After weeks of play therapy, the psychologist said he thought he was a sociopath, uh that was horrifying! So I didn’t take him back… I tried everything in my power to “fix things” myself. I tell you it was the most exhausting and painful time of my life. I would sit against my bedroom door, holding Dominic, who was 6 months, while Tre would kick my door, beating it with his fists, screaming “LET ME IN!” and if I did he would come after me. If I put him in his room, on time out, he would open the window and scream “HELP ME! She’s hurting me!” (seriously, I wasn’t!).
Finally at almost 7, we had had a lot of ups and downs. One day he snapped and tried to really hurt me, and it was beyond what I could justify. I went to counseling myself, hoping and praying I could somehow find a problem in me, something I could get help for, and that the problem was not inside of him… my counselor told me to get an evaluation ASAP! So, that’s what I did. The Child Psychiatrist talked to me about everything that had gone on, and my husband. They considered family history and asked about things I had never even thought of. After his evaluation he told me he truly thought my son was Bipolar. He said Early Onset Bipolar Disorder is not taken seriously but those who deal with it, know just how serious it can be.
I went home that night and read and read, and read some more. I don’t think I slept as much as I sat in bed wondering “How? Why? What now?” As I read I learned about the increased rate of suicide in bipolar teens, I read about the importance of stability, I learned about others going through the same experience… and that gave me some hope.
So we started medication and it was a rollercoaster in itself. At first good things but our insurance would not cover the meds that were most effective. Then we had a bad reaction to a med and he started hurting himself… But finally we had what is called stability. Medication never makes it all better, but it makes it manageable. It makes life easier for him.
Fast forward to December 2010, he had an ADHD evaluation, he tested very high for that. The Doctor who did the evaluation thought perhaps his ADHD was so severe, that he wasn’t bipolar. Well we weaned him off the bipolar meds and it was realized how important his meds were. Seeing a seven year old, suicidal is the hardest thing I’ve experienced as a parent.
So, we knew medication was going to be important. This year in school, the teacher and counselor approached me and said they felt Tre was Autistic. So after hearing this a few times, I talked to his doctor. She sent him for an Autism Evaluation. He scored in the 86th percentile; the doctor said he was confident saying he has Asperger’s. Sadly, there is no definitive test. No blood work can tell a parent for sure, that’s hard to accept.
I felt guilt that I had missed it all these years. We discovered many kids with Bipolar can have such severe symptoms that it overlaps the symptoms of other problems. Basically, dealing with rages and meltdowns, made it hard to identify the other symptoms he was experiencing.
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