Strategies for Working With Bipolar Children

Treating and handling bipolar disorder in your child is more than just giving him his medication with a full glass of water twice a day. You also have to learn coping skills and relationship skills that are specific to your family's situation and your child's needs.

Develop Rapport

• When you are a parent of a bipolar child, you have to find effective ways of working with your child so she knows you are listening to her and hearing what she is saying, as well as respecting her mental and emotional state. When you do this, you are communicating to your child that you want to follow her lead in your conversations so you can understand her more fully.
  You should be trying to work in cooperation with your child's therapist to help her address her current issues (i.e., self esteem, phobias, school issues, handling rages) while the therapist is working to help your child bring the opposing parts of her psyche into integration. Your role in this effort can be as simple as going for a walk and asking her to talk about what is going on with her today and inside herself.

Intervene Before a Problem Develops

• When you are forced to confront a situation regarding your child's behavior, you might begin to see a pattern emerging. If he is becoming oppositional and beginning to throw a tantrum, you need to figure out if his anger and frustration come from a direction you gave him, disagreement or an unexpected change in your day's plans. Decide if you want to go ahead with the plans causing the issue or if you can drop it. These are the moments you can use to help your son learn how to handle his feelings as he works on becoming more flexible.
  When you see your son becoming visibly frustrated or angry, this is the signal you need to intervene before the situation gets out of hand. It is much easier to deal with your son's frustration before it becomes a full meltdown situation.

Basket Method of Priorities

• Simply put, the "basket" method is a way of setting priorities, according to Dr. Ross Greene. The first basket (Basket A) is the category of priorities that you are willing to keep even as you risk experiencing meltdowns from your child. Basket B contains those priorities that are important but over which you don't want your daughter to go into a meltdown. These priorities are the ones where you need to train her to think through her frustration and maintain a sense of calm. Basket C is the set of priorities you want to remove from your daughter's focus so she can reduce her frustration.