Raising Bipolar

Having a naturally highly emotional child, this is one of the factors we deal with on a weekly basis.

What is real emotion?  What behaviors and reactions are in the child’s control?  Which ones are not in their control?  And which ones are being used to manipulate?

It’s hard to know sometimes.

As Rye becomes older and enters his teen years, one of the things that we notice about him is that over the years he has learned that his emotional reactions to circumstances and situations incur reactions in other people.   Sometimes the reactions are desirable to him and sometimes they are undesirable.  At times it is clear though that Rye knows now that through his emotions he can often get what he wants.  And this can become a problem.  Big time.  Especially as he gets older.

We had a situation like this last night.  I won’t go into the full details but it boiled down to Rye engaging in some behavior that was highly undesirable.  His behavior was directed at me because I am his safe one.  Unlike in times past, in this instance I did not give him much understanding  and  instead reacted very strongly to this behavior and really came down on him for it.  My feeling is he’s older now, he’s big (with shoes on he’s taller than me now and I’m 5′8″), and he needs to act right or learn decent ways to handle his feelings when he gets overwhelmed or he’ll be in a heap of trouble later.  And Don really came down on him for the behavior as well.  In kind, Rye then reacted even stronger and called Gam to come get him because he could not handle the household pressure (ie, he didn’t want any consequences for his actions).  Gam came and got him and while he was gone Rye decided he was the victim in the situation and that because Don got really mad at him and told him he would not take it anymore, Don was the bad guy (I am never the real bad guy because Rye is way too dependant on me).

So, how much of this is manipulation and how much of it is uncontrollable mood swings on Rye’s part?  It’s always hard to know.  In this particular instance, I think there is a decent level of attempted manipulation going on.

The saga continued this morning as I picked Rye up from Gam’s to take him to school.  He did not want to go to school.  He had 80 reasons why he should not go to school but I just kept driving.   He stayed home yesterday and that did not seem to serve him well so I didn’t see how staying home again today was going to help anything.  I explained to him that he needs less emotion today and it was good for him to go to school and think about something other than himself.  And if school was good enough for all of his friends, why was it not ok for him?  And on and on.  He stated if I made him go to school he felt like he would hit someone.  Manipulation or real emotion?  I’m  not sure.  I offered to take him home so he could take a pill if he felt he needed to calm down and chill out to make it through the day.  He declined the offer so we kept driving to school.  I explained to him that if he does hit someone, the consequences will be way beyond what he could even currently comprehend and he would not like the results.   We’ll see what happens.  When he realized he was not going to get his way he did switch gears and started talking about the clubhouse he wants to build.  Then when we arrived at school and he got out of the car he said he’d be fine at school.

Mood swings or manipulation?

Time will tell.