By Summer Macon
A child tells you about their mom, who has bipolar disorder, the days she's the most fun person alive, the days she can't get out of bed, and the times she goes away for a while to get steady again.
A child is telling you about their mom. Some days Mom is the best in the world. She dances in the kitchen, she says yes to everything, she stays up making enormous plans and paints a whole wall at midnight. Then there are the other days, when she stays in bed with the curtains shut and can't do the things she said she would. Sometimes she goes away for a while to get back on balance, and the child stays with family and waits. Mom takes medicine and sees people who help. She is still Mom the whole time. The book is small and plain-spoken, told entirely in the child's voice, and there's a page at the back that explains bipolar disorder properly for whoever is reading it.
I'd reach for this when a child is living with a parent whose moods swing hard, because it's the one book here that names bipolar disorder and shows both ends of it. The hard part for a young child often isn't the down days on their own. It's how fast Mom can flip between them. Seeing that on the page, with a name attached to it, can make it less bewildering. The book was made with families who live this and with the Wellcome Trust, and you can tell: the child gets to love the up days and also admit that the up days sometimes worry them. Nothing gets tidied away by the end. Mom has treatment, Mom has a bad stretch, Mom still loves them. For a young child living it, that's about what it looks like.