Bipolar Depression

I feel like I've been running around blind. I never thought it would be so hard to find things on line to get help and information about early onset bipolar for children.

My 6-year-old has had the same symptoms for most of his life and I guess I always hoped he would just grow out of it. It's just getting worse though. For the past year I've been looking into ADHD. I figured that must be it. However when I read over the symptoms of ADHD he didn't seem to quiet fit. Not entirely. Then just in the fast few months I ran into the connection between bipolar and adhd as well as others and it seems the closest to explaining every aspect of my son and his behavior is found in this one little package. Maybe coupled with odd and cd. Wonderful alphabet.

I'm actually more releived now than I am scared that we might have a direction to go to help him but honestly it doesn't sound promising. The first thing I encountered was the doctor stating he is all over the boards with ADHD. I agree with him on most of that but then he asked what I thought so I told him about bipolar tendencies that the had and I'm lucky I guess cause he backed off the ADHD immediately and said that we needed to rule that out first. I'm glad he said that.

We have an appointment on Friday with a psychiatrist. I hope that's the right start and I really hope they don't automatically push the anti-depressants on him cause I plan on refusing to treat him for ADHD until they rule out bipolar.

I feel really lost and it's all so new yet I'm learning so much about him that the things he does tends to stress me out less since I know where it's coming from. I still have this little voice in my head that tries to convince me that this is a bad decision for him that I should wait and see what happens. I'm hoping that voice is normal. I'm not just crazy. I feel like a horrible mom. Always. No matter what I do I feel I'm doing it wrong. Even now as many books as I'm studying on every bipolar aspect as well as all the co-morbid issues that could follow I feel like it's all wrong. I feel I'm making him something that he's not. But on the other hand I know he is.

I know by raising to healthy daughters that the stages he is still going through are not normal at all. I know he shouldn't be threatening to kill people, screaming at the top of his lungs and having meltdowns everytime we tell him know even if what he's asking is completely out of the question. I know that the amount of time he spends destroying peoples things or worse yet, beating up the children in the neighborhood cause he feels they were being rude is not normal. I know that in my own house I shouldn't feel like because he gets that black look in his eyes that we should all be real careful what we say or do cause he's bound to lose it at any minute. I fear for my daughter cause he hurts her a lot. Less now that we are able to see more of the signs and catch them before they go off. but I fear for her and it makes me sad that as much as she adores her brother and has always been just another mom he hurts her feelings so often by hurting her and destroying her things that you can tell she almost wishes she could hate him. It's horrible.

I know that what we are experiencing is something he needs help for so why am I still questioning myself. I feel like I'm going to make him worse by trying to get him help. Please tell me this is normal.