Being a parent is enough in itself, and being a parent of young children when faced with a serious problem Mental illness Sounds like an emotional and psychological minefield. But it doesn’t have to be so daunting: It’s possible to manage a personal mental health condition and raise a family.
I have lived with Bipolar disorder, a serious mental health condition, for more than two decades. I am the mother of two children, Amartya, 14, and Agastya, 11. Bipolarity, as its name indicates, leads me to euphoric and desperate ups and downs; mood swings that my children have witnessed growing up. I have been stable for the last four years and also had a similar period of balance when the children were very young. But, in between, there were many years marked by regular “manic episodes,” when I had too much energy and got lost in my own racing thoughts, or plunged into weeks of depression.
However, my children are happy, confident and secure, at home and at school. Our bond is strong. My job, as a writer, motivational speaker, and visiting professor, allows me to work flexibly and largely from home. I was an active mom when they were young, and even now, when their schedules are busiest, we spend a lot of time together at the table, playing table tennis, watching movies on weekends, and going on trips. Daily life is quite ‘normal’, in other words.
Some specific parenting approaches have helped us weather these storms. First of all, it is important to recognize that nothing can be hidden from children. they refer to me humor changes in her own language, saying “Mamma’s in a funny mood”. Amartya is particularly quick to notice changes in my expressions and behavior. “Why are your eyes so red? Why are you so quiet?” he said, even when he was very young. Aside from the extreme mood swings that occur from time to time, bipolarity is defined by daily swings in moods; up, down, and sideways. It quickly detects these changes in body posture, expressions, tone of voice and energy levels.
It is important to provide children with an honest explanation of what is happening. Since I like to write, I wrote them a poem called ‘Tigress in the bedroom’ that explains bipolarity to young children, to talk about how you feel when your thoughts and emotions pull you in different directions. The kids said they could relate to it. Even if you don’t want to write a poem, you can always explain the condition and its symptoms in plain language.
In emergency situations, the support of the immediate family is essential. When my manic episodes are at their peak, my husband Amit sends me to my sister’s or mother’s house to recover. This protects children from my excesses: when I talk to myself, I speak on a voice recorder, I don’t sleep all night and I write furiously. Although we haven’t had to resort to this tactic for some time, temporary relocation is our standard operating procedure. Amit, my in-laws, and our in-house staff provide a comforting cocoon for the kids when I’m away.
Once the children understood and absorbed the condition, they developed a sense of empathy and maturity on the subject. On one occasion, Amit pointed out her anxiety to take care of me if we were going to a potentially troublesome destination that she wanted us to travel to on vacation. “If there are problems, I don’t know what’s going through her mind, you don’t know what’s going through her mind,” she told Amartya, who replied, softly and gently, “She doesn’t know what’s going on. is happening in her mind, either.
Even if a mental health condition is normalized at home and the children are well adjusted, parents fault it can float like a cloud. Bipolarity is understood to be an inherited disease, and I often wonder about the odds of passing it on, which to my knowledge is higher than the average layperson, but not very high in absolute terms. This is somewhat reassuring and strengthens my resolve to improve their resilience, so that they can deal with life’s setbacks, unprovoked, as much as possible.
Perhaps the most important lens for looking at mental health is through the lens of health: when I am manic, only my mind is sick, it is not my personality or identity that is under siege. It is important to use words like ‘discomfort’, rather than something more critical. Just like COVID, all I need is time to rest and recover. And much like COVID and its successive waves, my experience of my mood swings is that they come and go, they don’t stay. I always come home, and my children know it.
Aparna Piramal Raje is the author of Chemical Khichdi: How I Hacked My Mental Health (Ebury Press)
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