The SCHOOL is seeing it, well the principal anyway and beginning to comprehend.

We had a meeting with them this morning about what we can do to deal with the days she just can’t function.

Last week was a three day camp. Just 3 days in Ballarat. We could see her mood building with the anticipation of camp and sleep reducing so we sedated her a couple of nights over the weekend before to make sure she was well rested to last the days, which she did quite well but cracks started to be seen.

She came home Wednesday and literally imploded emotionally like exhaling a huge breathe as if she had been holding it in for 3 whole days.

She basically went walk about at every opportunity for the next 5 days avoiding anything she should be doing and playing truant with her best friend. I’m not surprised, disappointed but not at all surprised. The welfare officer found them both yesterday at her friends house.

At the meeting this morning from the moment we arrived the principal could see she wasn’t herself. She had never before seen her so closed off and withdrawn simply refusing to engage and making indications to ward people off including grunting.

I explained that her current state has spent days in the arriving.

So we all went into the meeting letting her wait in the hall so that we could actually talk.

The principal could see over the three days her ‘mask’ as she calls it begin to crack a little but she was still able to recover the situations she encountered.

She was astonished at how much will power and energy it must have taken her for all these years (she is 11 in year 5) for the school to never in all these 6 years get a glimpse at her symptoms which were more than evident in the child waiting in the hallway outside her office absolutely burnt out from the 3 day effort and still pulling herself back together 6 days later.

Combined learning with both at school and at home work is about to become her option. For those days when the mask is slipping and too much energy is necessary to keep it in place.

Interesting though she also seemed to be picking my brain for knowledge of the disorder and tactics we use to manage it.

I gave her one of Stephen fry’s descriptions of bipolar.

Bipolar is like the weather. It is important that you remember that the rain will end, but no amount of wishing it will stop the rain. It simply is raining for the moment which we must accept.