Keep the Kids in the Loop

Parenting in and of itself is a very difficult task for many of us and if we are to make room for supporting health issues such as bipolar disorder, the road offers many more curves and bumps than we may have anticipated. After talking about such challenges brought on by bipolar disorder, such as unexpected triggers, episodes and cycle shifts…it might make sense to try and shield our children from the destructive world of the disorder. However, as I’ve experienced with my own children, it doesn’t help any of us to offer sugarcoated or scripted answers to even some of the toughest questions they have.

When the disorder went into overtime to make itself known to my wife and I, our oldest daughter was five years old at the time and what with the challenges that a five year old can bring alone, the parenting issues and the disorder merged together and made for some very stressful evenings at home. While I was working in the home office or hanging out downstairs, it became routine to hear or help out with the struggle of coaxing our daughter to actually go to bed at night when she was clearly not willing to agree with us. These struggles would ensue more and more triggers within my wife and each night, after we finally put out the fires, she would collapse herself into tears asking why it seems so much harder than it did a year prior.

Over time, the progression of the disorder made it that much more difficult for my wife to *enjoy* motherhood as if anything had happened that we as parents, didn’t approve of, these would result in other triggers that would interfere with the routines we had developed. As to be expected, since we now have four children, the stress of my wife playing the stay-at-home role with most of them at home with her generated huge amounts of stress and frustration. She did however, keep up with the demands and when allowed, she was able to take some time for herself when I came home from work or if we had assistance from others, although this was rare.

As parents normally try, our goal was to protect them as much as possible and simply keep them away from any negativity if my wife had hit a bump in the road. During the very early ages, this made sense to us as we did not want them exposed to any outbursts or periods of instability. To ensure this was in place, and luckily I have coworkers that understood well enough, if my wife did need to make the call, I came home as soon as possible to relieve her when I could.

As the children grew older and a bit wiser to our situation, as did the disorder and its own progression. Episodes were more prominent and although the children have never been in any danger, they did start to see more and more of the roller coaster that we were all riding. Again, although rare, sometimes we would experience some very difficult patches and a trigger would spiral my wife into a horrible episode that no matter what, we simply could not shield the kids away from. During those times, the kids are indeed the first priority and if I had the option, I would drive them over to my father’s house for a bit or put them in a bedroom on the other side of the house with a relatively loud movie that they enjoyed.

In some unfortunate cases, they would witness some events that to them, seemed as though we were fighting…these are the cases where she would hit a hypomanic phase, lose reality a bit and verbally attack me (never the kids) and this would upset the children, understandably so. When stability hit, or I was able to calm my wife down enough to have her rest, I would then shift focus back on the children and ensure that they were well.

Yes, and many have asked me this, my children have asked the difficult questions, “Does Mommy hate us?” or, “Are you and Mommy getting a divorce?”.

When these questions started coming around, I knew it was time to bring the kids into the loop, after all, they are part of the family and this will be a part of them for the rest of their own lives. It’s difficult to explain to the younger children about what’s going on, but for the two older ones, I was as honest as I could be with them and to my own surprise, they got it…almost immediately. Today they know how to not only handle themselves, but they can also help us out with the two younger ones and once they are old enough, I’ll bring them in as well.

The hardest thing I’ve ever had to hear from any of my children is when my son asked me some time ago if his mother hated him because he was so bad. If I had not sat him down and explained to him what was going on and that Mommy will never stop loving him and that these issues are never going to be his fault, I can’t imagine what kind of trauma that would cause such a young mind. I truly do believe that if I went the high road with my own kids, it would only hurt them more when the dark times hit home.

Honesty, to me anyway, is always the best policy when it comes to raising kids, and when we manage bipolar disorder in the family, it also affects the little ones. Now, if things do go South for us, the kids simply ask me if Mommy is OK yet and since I try to keep them away from her when it’s really bad, they check in on me and ask me to do one thing, “Tell Mommy that we love her and we’ll be here when she comes back.”

With a passion to reach out and to help others, Rich opens up a direct view into the trials and tribulations that come with managing a bipolar relationship and how to use real-world techniques to aid in stability and support.

Rich Wallace

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