How and when do you tell your children

[meh]

Something I've been grappling with since I was diagnosed with Bipolar II - when, how and what do I tell my children.

My son is 12 and my daughters are 10. I believe it's their right to know but I just can't figure out how old, how to bring it up, how not to scare the willies out of them....

Any parents out there with experience?

[manuel_moe_g]

My daughter is 15, and I only speak of my depression after the fact, in reference to how I execute a capable plan to deal with it.

I had a bad experience with my mother having "migraines" when I was 9 - she just put me in a panic, and my mother had no ability to model a capable response, so I felt completely helpless, and it preyed on my inborn anxiety. (I say "migraines" because, in the clarity of adulthood, I see that it was her incapable response to depression and anxiety.)

That is the reason why I waited until my daughter was 14-15 to speak plainly about my depression to my daughter, and why I always frame it inside of my own capable response, because I want to model a capable response, even if my response is imperfect (also good to model how to deal with the compromises in an imperfect response)

Please know we are here to support you, no matter how you decide to proceed. Please take care, all the best, we here are cheering for you and for your greatest today and tomorrow.

[Selkie]

I have no children, so I have little I can claim to have direct experience with. But perhaps the perspective from the child's point of view might provide some insight:

My own father never told me he had OCD, Depression, or PTSD. Frankly, such labels proved unimportant. He was just dad to me, and he had been beaten up as a kid by his father and by nuns, but that was about all I knew until I was in my late teens. Really I only learned of how serious his symptoms were when I was an adult, and only from my mother (my biological parents have always been together) who helped him through it.

I consider my dad a major success story for a person with mental illness being able to be a good parent. And now, looking back, I attribute his success to aggressively pursuing treatment and applying himself. He saw therapists regularly and also took medication, but I never knew. He knew how to carefully remove himself when he needed so (not long times, just an hour here and there), so that my brother and I wouldn't be burdened with his symptoms.