by Julie O'Brien

Created on: May 13, 2010

As the parent of one of these children, so everyone first thought. I wholeheartedly believe that Bi Polar is in all probability over diagnosed. When my son first entered the first grade his teacher thought he was the most disturbed child in the universe I think. As his parents we knew that he was not your "quote" normal child, whatever normal is suppose to be these days. We knew he had behavior problems and an over active imagination, everyone just assumes it is the parenting, but in most cases the parents don't know how to deal with these children. You live and learn from many mistakes.

With this being said, the first thing the therapists and teachers thought was Bi polar, parents need to insist on testing from the school and the mental health centers.  Don't just rely on preliminary diagnoses and first opinions. After months of testing of everything in the spectrum should you have a final diagnoses. Then you can accurately treat the child. It turns out that many children just have anxiety and children react differently to stress than most adults.

We have to wonder why so many children are being labeled with psychotic diseases?  Is it simply environmental or vaccines? Or society? We have a lot of questions with no direct answers to them. So as parents we have to do our part in trying to make sure that our children are properly diagnosed, don't take the first diagnoses to heart, get a second and even a third opinion.

It is easy to take the children to a doctor and get some medication to try and calm them down or help them sleep. But, is it the right thing to do? I don't think so. We don't want little zombies running around, how much is that really going to help them or society? I do understand that it is very difficult to diagnose these children, there are many similarities in many child mental health problems. We have ADHD, ODD, ADD, Bi Polar, Depression, Anxiety,  Autism, Aspergers, Dyslexia these all have some very similar symptoms and some very different symptoms.

We all have to agree that children have a lot of energy and some have big imaginations, we all get depressed at some point in our life and children are no different. They just handle these things in a different way. Some children daydream and this is mistaken as a focus problem. Dig deep and don't accept the first diagnoses, get multiple opinions and make sure your child is medicated or treated for the correct problem.

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