We have four young children, all with different personalities and all tend to feed off of each other much like any connected group of family members. As can be imagined, there are fights, name-calling, talking back and general rebelling against the rules that we lay down in the home. However, as much as we can educate, prepare for and expect these issues to happen, we are reminded again that we are within the boundaries of a bipolar relationship and the kids themselves, or their behavior become a trigger point.

Our oldest daughter is the ringleader of the group and happens to deal with her own battles as being diagnosed with ADHD and suspected that she will also deal with bipolar disorder down the road. She is very much the “drama queen” and demands to be the center of attention, which can introduce conflict not only between the children, but also between her and my wife.

Our second child, the lone son of the group is seen as second in command of the group and commonly provides his two cents without invitation and challenges the logic of everybody and everything, including my wife and I. He’s very much an inquisitor, but it’s obvious that when his curiosity gets the better of my wife when he’s on a roll, he can be met with a very unexpected result to his query.

Our two youngest daughters are still considered the babies of the family where one is overly sensitive and loves to compete with her brother in the rankings of the group while the youngest one still plays the “I’m too cute to cause problems”, card.

My wife, much like myself, are not very fond of having to repeat ourselves very often and when the minds of the children take over and conveniently forget what they are expected to do, stress levels begin to rise and can easily boil over for my wife into an unexpected episode. When the danger zone has been activated, the kids learn really quick that they have indeed crossed that line. It is a continuous learning pattern, not only for the kids, but for us as well as boundaries start to be drawn out and expectations are also set although the challenge is being able to predict an unidentifiable pattern.

Children are extremely impressionable and when things start to go downhill, initially this does cause a shock wave within the family that is difficult for them to understand the “How’s” or the “Why’s” related to the downfall. Unfortunately, the first question that comes up when they do ask me is, “What did I do wrong?”

Much like supporters asking the same question, the priority I set for the kids is to make sure that they know that, in most cases, the downfall has absolutely nothing to do with them or what they have done. When episodes hit, most times there is nothing that caused it, but the children are constantly trying to make us proud and if there is a negative action, they will automatically assume they are the issue.

Similar to first line supporters such as myself, children in the home will see the worst of the challenges brought on by triggers and episodes. Yes, the constant pressure of parenting can indeed trigger our loved ones, but if the episode becomes overbearing, it’s critical to remember that the kids are doing what kids do and as long as the situation warrants actual disciplinary action, the kids are the innocence of the family and may not be able to adjust on their own.

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.”

Although the variable of bipolar disorder had not yet made itself known to us until we had our fourth and final child, hindsight of course, painted a clearer picture of the past and now helps us keep our children as safe as possible when the rough patches come around.

Just about any journey into parenthood will surely have its bumps in the road based on trying to raise the children and mold them into what we feel is right for their upbringing. What I thought was going to be the hardest part of my responsibility as a new father, was finding common ground between my wife and I based on our own pasts and beliefs and how to apply these to our growing family.

When bipolar episodes hit that affect our parenting responsibilities, my dual role as a supporter and father merge together and I oftentimes have to make decisions on where to take the focus of helping the kids to understand what just happened. Some parents are willing to educate their children on these challenges as they aren’t going to leave the family anytime soon; others make the decision to take the children out of the picture altogether and end up leaving their spouse and take the kids away from them.

Parents are to be as conscious as possible when it comes to managing a bipolar family as there may indeed be times when an episode materializes and the kids may be negatively affected, or even placed in a dangerous situation. Sometimes, there must be some very difficult decisions to be made during these crucial times as when irrationality comes into play involving children, a very ugly game of tug of war may ensue.

Our Situation
First off, my wife has never struck or abused our children and to this day, no matter how difficult it gets, I do not see her ever losing the battle long enough to do so.

As to be expected in a bipolar relationship, parenting with bipolar in the family can bring forth some very challenging situations. When our first child was born, my wife dipped into some expected postpartum depression due to the major changes that come with bringing a new baby home. Since we did not know about our connection with bipolar at the time, we stuck together as best we could handing the issues as they came along with what we knew about the PPD…which wasn’t much.

In the following years of parenthood and the illness progressed, we saw more and more outbursts that were in line with some of the cycles she had been experiencing. There was an increasing amount of yelling and crying, which during these times, I started to realize that the kids were noticing the pattern as well.

We didn’t have many major challenges with bipolar episodes as a result of the children themselves, a bad night here and there, most like all parents will. It wasn’t until about five years ago, which is about the same time the diagnosis of bipolar came around, that we started to run into the real problems.

Our oldest daughter was not exactly colic throughout her younger times, but when she grew a little older, she did not like to go to bed and would yell, scream and kick her bedroom and closet doors letting us know about her disapproval. These continued for many, many nights as we tried to work with our daughter, however, the presence of bipolar was making itself known more and more during this time.

Finally, one night in particular, I was downstairs while my wife was putting our children to bed for the day. Our oldest proceeded to perform her ritual and as I was in the kitchen, I heard some sobbing…I knew it wasn’t the kids as they were all in their rooms, so I made my way to the landing of the stairs and looked up to see my wife, broken and crying uncontrollably at the top of the stairs.

Again, I wasn’t the best husband in the world and back then, I just blew it off and let her deal with the issue alone for a bit. Later on, she was still very shaken up and upset; beyond what I had seen in the past. She never really “lost it”, but made it very clear that the stress was truly affecting her an a new way that we had now seen before. Later that week, we saw her doctor and realized that bipolar was with us to stay.

How We Cope
Luckily, when episodes hit us, my wife has enough control to send the kids off to the backyard to play or to their room if she feels that it’s going to be a rough period. Either that, or she will excuse herself from whatever we are doing and go to our bedroom and close our door. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the course of action that is taken, and the kids will see the ugly side of an attack.

During the worst episodes, especially when she is forced to lash out, it will always come to me, which I am perfectly fine so long as the kids aren’t targeted. The first thing I do, if given the opportunity, is to remove the kids from the environment by means mentioned above. However, even if there is screaming involved, I know the kids can hear what’s going on and if it does indeed get bad enough, I have to make an even more difficult decision to actually get the kids and leave the house with them in order to let my wife calm down some. The flip side of this is, I’ve now left my wife alone, which can be very dangerous as well, but I have to put the kids first in this situation.

If I can drop them off at my father’s house for the night, I’ll do so and go back home and help my wife cope with the rest of the episode. This way, the children are out of the line of fire and my wife and I can focus on gaining stability once more. If the situation calls for it, which is many times, I’ll sit the children down and be fully honest with them about the illness and explain to them about why these issues happen and remind them that they are NOT the problem and that we, of course, love them with every fiber of our being.

In conclusion, parenting with bipolar disorder does indeed have its challenges and can be messy and confusing to the children of the family if not handled well, or not at all. Our own course of action is to educate our children as best we can to let them know that they are not being attacked and are truly loved regardless of what mommy or daddy is doing during the rough times. My wife will always be ‘mommy’ to them, so I would rather my children know the real person, including the illness being a part of our lives than simply turn a blind eye to the issue. I don’t expect many to feel this way, and I respect that to my fullest ability, but including our children in the journey works for us. Because of this, my children have never asked me, “Why does mommy hate us?”