brand new day

The other day a mother posted on my daughter's fifth grade class page urging parents to have a talk with their children about the misuse of the word "retard".  It was both sad and infuriating.  It got me thinking about how callous and insensitive our attitudes are toward mental illness and how misinformed we are as a society regarding mental health issues.  We throw around terms like schizo, psycho, bipolar, crazy, mental, retarded as if they are interchangeable and as if it is acceptable to categorize people as such.    As most of you know if you follow my blog, I have bipolar disorder.  I don't want to lay out the clinical criteria for a diagnosis of bipolar disorder (BPD) or "educate you".  Instead, I want to share with you my experience living with BPD.  I'd wager a bet that it's probably different than you might think.  And although this is my own personal experience, I don't think that I am an exception to the rule or outside the norm o

    This was Henry's freshman year of high school.  It's been a year of firsts for both of us; his first year of high school, and my first year parenting a high schooler.  Suffice it to say, we have both learned a lot. Historically, I have struggled with how to best help Henry with academics.  He is really smart, and not just text book smart, but a really cool and creative kind of smart.  The kind of smart that has the ability to be book smart, but easily gets bored with a list of facts on a piece of paper, especially if he fails to see the relevancy to his life.  So he has all this potential, but not a lot of drive to get the best grades.  On one hand, I love that he doesn't place a lot of value on grades.  And I agree with him, there are so many other under utilized and under valued ways to measure understanding and growth than by looking at a number at the bottom of a transcript.  However, philosophical discussions aside, the fact remains that opportunities awa