BipolarCentral
Your One Stop Source For Information On Bipolar Disorder

Loved One With Bipolar Disorder?
Discover How to Cope and Deal with
Your loved One's Bipolar Disorder

Do You Have Bipolar Disorder?
Learn the Secrets to Cope and Deal
With Your Bipolar Disorder

Child With Bipolar Disorder?
Learn How to REALLY Help
And Support Your Child

Dating Someone With Bipolar?
Secrets to a Successful
Relationship Revealed

Marrying Someone With Bipolar?
Learn How to Support Your Spouse
and Avoid Common Mistakes

Need Money Because of Bipolar Disorder?
Learn How to Be Successful Even if
You are Dealing with Bipolar Disorder

Drug Addiction and Bipolar Disorder
Secrets to Beating Drug Addiction
When Dealing with Bipolar Disorder

Need Affordable Health Insurance?
Information You Can't Live Without
If You are Dealing with Bipolar Disorder

In Debt Because of Bipolar Disorder?
Get out of debt fast!

Improve Your Emotional Health
Reduce Your Stress Levels and
Increase Your Brain Power

Top 10 Parental Mistakes

Bipolar Disorder is also known as manic depression, which is a brain disorder that causes unusual and sometimes significant shifts in a person's energy, mood, and ability to function. Unlike someone living with depression, bipolar comes with symptoms that can be not just severe but deadly. People living with Bipolar Disorder have difficult living a normal, functioning life. They end up losing jobs, dealing with broken relationships, failing in school, and committing suicide.

Today, more than two million adults in the United States have Bipolar Disorder, which means approximately 1% of the 18 and over population lives with this illness. Although Bipolar will generally show symptoms in teenage years or even early adulthood, it can appear much later in life. The problem is that many times, Bipolar Disorder is not recognized or taken seriously. With this form of mental illness, it is essential that the individual receives a proper diagnosis and is then placed on the right type of treatment and therapy.

For parents of children with bipolar, the situation can feel overwhelming and even hopeless. For the parent, it is extremely difficult to watch the child lose friends and struggle in school and for the child with the bipolar, life seems worthless and frustrating. The good news is that new medications and therapies coupled with the right doctor are proving extremely helpful, teaching parents and children the wrong and right things to do to get through each manic episode. However, parents commonly make 10 mistakes that can make the situation much worse. To help other parents with children of bipolar, the following things should always be avoided:

1. Inconsistency
2. Completing the child's chores or reducing/eliminating responsibility to make things easier on you
3. Tolerating and excusing abuse and/or inappropriate behavior
4. Making promises and not delivering
5. Punishing the child out of anger
6. Giving in without consequences or using bribery
7. Two parents being out of sync regarding discipline or undermining each others decision and authority over behavioral consequences
8. Losing control over your temper
9. Rejecting something the child is good at as a means of paying consequences or punishment for inappropriate behavior
10. Lecturing and/or dominating conversations and dominating the conversation

With insight and minor changes, parents can take control over manic episodes, guiding and teaching the child with bipolar how to handle situations in a more effective and productive manner.

About The Author

Stacey Adams supports her mother and child, both of whom have bipolar disorder. Stacey is a contributing writer for www.BipolarCentral.com.

Back to Article List

This Week's Bipolar News

Living With Bipolar Depression
North American Press Syndicate  
(NAPSI)-The more you know about a condition such as bipolar disorder, and in particular the depressive episodes of the condition, the better able you may be ...

Harvard Psychiatrist Must Suspend Clinical Trials Over Conflicts
InjuryBoard.com
The New York Times reports, “Dr. Biederman’s work helped to fuel a 40-fold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder and a ...

Fortunate Folks Like To Give Back
Detroit Free Press  
"It came out of the pain I had inside of me for many years," said Prechter, whose Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Fund supports groundbreaking genetic ...

Click here for all Bipolar News.

Featured Article:

Being the Ultimate Perfectionist

                                                           By Michele Soloway Sexton

I am the ultimate perfectionist.  Yes, me.  I even got a fortune cookie one time that said, "You have a yearning for perfection," do you believe that?"  Even Confucius knows it!

But it's a real battle for me.  I expect things from myself that I would never expect from anyone else, and it really messes with my bipolar disorder, because, well, no one's perfect, and no one can live with that kind of stress.

So I was talking to someone about it lately, and they told me, "It's ok to strive for perfection, as long as you don't expect to arrive at perfection."

It's ok to make mistakes.  That's what I've been learning.  If you don't learn that, you'll be bound up in fear (another thing that's bad for our bipolar disorder). 

Click here to read the entire article

Terms of Service | Privacy Policy

Copyright 2004-2008, BipolarCentral.com