The girl
Okay, the short version of the story is that we're still trying to figure out whether the girl child is bipolar and, if not, what IS going on with her.
I spoke with Dr. H about the girl child's history of behavior several weeks ago, and he recommended I read The Explosive Child and The Bipolar Child and see if either description sounded like her. I read The Explosive Child first and really didn't see the girl in it at all. Apparently explosive children are chronically inflexible, and that's just not her.
So then I picked up The Bipolar Child and Oh. My. Goodness. This is my kid. She has fourteen of the sixteen factors listed in the first chapter. I got the same feeling reading this book that I got when we started reading up on AS after the boy child was diagnosed. It's like all these weird little puzzle pieces that never seemed to relate to one another before suddenly fell together into something that made complete sense. I'm not saying she IS bipolar or that we're locking our sights on that at the exclusion of everything else, but it has certainly confirmed that SOMETHING is going on with this kid.
See, I think the problem is that we (meaning DH and I) don't know how "normal" children behave. I mean, all we have is the boy and the girl, and they are absolute opposites. The boy lives in his own head much of the time, is very left-brained and logical and sequential, and doesn't seem to need a lot of interaction because of the whole autism thing. The girl, on the other hand, is very extroverted, not comfortable in her own skin, highly creative and right-brained and visual, and can't entertain herself to save her life. He closes down; she rages. He seems to feel very little in the way of emotion; she has an absolute hair trigger where sadness, anger and excitement are concerned. There is no "medium" in our house. We always knew something was up with the boy, so we kind of focused on that and I think we just assumed that the girl was so different because she was more "normal". It has only really been since she's been in school that we've been able to observe how different she really is from other kids.
Anyway, after the boy's appointment with Dr. H this afternoon, when I was scheduling his next appointment, I also scheduled an appointment for us to do some intake/assessment for the girl. I have no idea where it will lead, but we've got to start somewhere. Last night she sobbed uncontrollably for nearly two hours, talking about how she's a "nothing" and a "nobody" and how she hates her life and everyone's mean to her, and we have NO IDEA WHY. We have GOT to get this kid some help before puberty hits.
I spoke with Dr. H about the girl child's history of behavior several weeks ago, and he recommended I read The Explosive Child and The Bipolar Child and see if either description sounded like her. I read The Explosive Child first and really didn't see the girl in it at all. Apparently explosive children are chronically inflexible, and that's just not her.
So then I picked up The Bipolar Child and Oh. My. Goodness. This is my kid. She has fourteen of the sixteen factors listed in the first chapter. I got the same feeling reading this book that I got when we started reading up on AS after the boy child was diagnosed. It's like all these weird little puzzle pieces that never seemed to relate to one another before suddenly fell together into something that made complete sense. I'm not saying she IS bipolar or that we're locking our sights on that at the exclusion of everything else, but it has certainly confirmed that SOMETHING is going on with this kid.
See, I think the problem is that we (meaning DH and I) don't know how "normal" children behave. I mean, all we have is the boy and the girl, and they are absolute opposites. The boy lives in his own head much of the time, is very left-brained and logical and sequential, and doesn't seem to need a lot of interaction because of the whole autism thing. The girl, on the other hand, is very extroverted, not comfortable in her own skin, highly creative and right-brained and visual, and can't entertain herself to save her life. He closes down; she rages. He seems to feel very little in the way of emotion; she has an absolute hair trigger where sadness, anger and excitement are concerned. There is no "medium" in our house. We always knew something was up with the boy, so we kind of focused on that and I think we just assumed that the girl was so different because she was more "normal". It has only really been since she's been in school that we've been able to observe how different she really is from other kids.
Anyway, after the boy's appointment with Dr. H this afternoon, when I was scheduling his next appointment, I also scheduled an appointment for us to do some intake/assessment for the girl. I have no idea where it will lead, but we've got to start somewhere. Last night she sobbed uncontrollably for nearly two hours, talking about how she's a "nothing" and a "nobody" and how she hates her life and everyone's mean to her, and we have NO IDEA WHY. We have GOT to get this kid some help before puberty hits.
posted by Miss Anthrope at 6:00 PM
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