Question Title: 8-year-old with seizure disorder

My daughter is taking 500 mg depakote in a syrup form. I thought she was, anyway.
After I would pour it out for her in a small cup and mix with juice, she said she
would take it "after I left." My suspicions grew as to her honesty when the past
few weeks she has started creeping into bed with us -- and, close to 4:30 a.m.
she has been suddently stiffening in bed and shaking for approximately 5 seconds.
I let it go on so long because I thought she was having nightmares -- now I'm not
sure. She did confess she has not been taking the syrup, and I talked the
doctor into capsules. She now takes it in front of me, and is swallowing them
quite well. My questions: 1) could these five second "stiffenings" be
seizures? And 2) If they are seizures, is this indicative of seizures being
a permanent problem in her life? Our neurologist said if a child has over
ten seizures, their chances of seizures being "forever" are much, much greater.

Thank you for your time, and I do appreciate your help!!!

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It is of course impossible to be certain of what is happening here, but given the history is
does seem likely that these events during the night are seizures, she has
a diagnosis of epilepsy and has not been taking her medication.
The only way to be absolutley sure would be to admit her to a EEG-video
monitoring unit and record video and EEG overnight.
The question of her having seizures all her life is more dependent on the
underlying cause of her seizures than any of the events of the past few months.
If she has temporal lobe seizures the chances of growing out of them are
low, if she has benign focal epilepsy of childhood the chances of remission
are very high. Without knowing the diagnostic label or epilepsy syndrome it
is not possible to predict this, you should ask your neurologit what type of
epilepsy she has and with that information we can tell you the chances of
growing out of this eventually.

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