Early Signs of Bipolar Disorder...

The child who evidences the “bipolar signature” seems unable to read and respond to parental emotional signaling (Greenspan and Glovinsky, unpublished). Soothing gestures and behaviors on the part of the parent increase rather than decrease agitation.

As these children reach higher stages of functional emotional development and are able to represent and symbolize emotional experiences many children with bipolar patterns can be creative and imaginative, but remain constricted in their emotional range. Now the children are able to engage in pretend play. In some themes they can sustain co-regulated emotional reciprocity, e.g., nurturance, but when they engage in aggressive themes they shift to an “action mode” marked by excitability, impulsivity, and frank aggression, e.g., throwing things, destroying property, and striking out physically at adults with whom they are engaged. Their words merely describe an event and accompany the discharge of aggression in their actions, rather than containing or representing their intense feelings in a dialogue (Greenspan and Glovinsky, unpublished).

As these children move to higher levels of logical and reflective thinking, these earlier patterns continue leaving the child with a bipolar pattern in a more polarized “all-or-nothing” verbal and behavioral pattern. These children have difficulty with "gray-area" thinking and reflective thinking, in emotionally charged areas that other children use to modulate emotional expressions. Unless there are environmental interventions or perhaps shifts in life experiences, the bipolar patterns may continue through latency, adolescence, and into adulthood.