cathyw1970
New Member
Just to give a little history about my difficult child. Even as a baby he wasn't a typical baby. He cried all the time, didn't want you to hold him much, never slept all night. AS a toddler he was very impulsive. I gave up the idea of working due to no one wanted to babysit him. Not even daycares. By the age of 2 he had already been kicked out of 2 daycares. When he was 3 his peditrition said to me when I was ready to have him tested to bring him. At age 4 he came after me with a knife to stab me while I was blow drying my hair because I wouldn't let him watch Lion King. I took him to the dr, did the questions he referred me to a psychologist and he was diagnosis'ed adhd. That's when the hell began. First it was ritalin,dextrastat,welbutrin and a few other's I honestly can't remember off the top of my head. All of these medications made my difficult child absolutely go crazy. He started talking to a person that wasn't there and when you would ask him what they were talking about he said that the monster was telling him to kill me. That's when the psychologist started possibly leaning toward bipolar. A doctor that went to our church told me to stop taking him to that psy because you can't diagnosis bipolar until puberty hit. I trusted her judgement and weaned him off his medications and stopped taking him. Refused to take him to another dr until he was in second grade. By the time my difficult child was 8 he was emotionally withdrawn, violent outbursts that he would never remember, still not sleeping. I would have to do room searches on him and would find my steak knives under his bed, found a hit list of names of people he wanted to kill, found my cleaning chemicals and razor blades under his bed. I was having to go get him from school 3-4 days a week because of the disruptions. That's when I took him to his present pedetrition who was suspecting odd. That was about the time I found this site and started posting. Someone here mentioned bipolar again and gave me alot of sites to go to. That's when I started asking questions from my family and his bio dad's family. Bipolar runs on both sides along with adhd and psychofrenia(mispelled). His pedetrition referred him to the local mental health clinic here and they said nothing was wrong with him at all but written expressive disorder. Said he didn't even have adhd. Which I knew was hog wash, wasn't saying my son was bipolar but I knew there was something wrong. So things got worse. By this time it had been 2yrs since my difficult child even hugged me or smiled. We got lucky and finally got in to see a well known psychiatrist here. He had all of his history long before the appointment. He told me then that he would not outright give difficult child the diagnosis of BiPolar (BP) but he would put him on medications to treat him for it. He said that if it wasn't the case of him not being BiPolar (BP) then I could possibly see alot of the signs like he was when the other dr tried the stimulant drugs. Three days later my son came up and hugged me for the first time and said I love you mama. I do feel that there are alot of children diagnosis'ed wrongly, however from what I have seen from my son, the manic both hypo and hyper I can say that in some cases diagnosis before puberty can be done. It's all according on finding the right psychiatrist that will listen to you and also listen to the child. Just MO. BiPolar (BP) is a harsh diagnosis, but I would much rather have my child be treated for it and have a fighting chance at some type of normal life than to go untreated and live in the worse hell than he does now.
