Can my 5 year old be bipolar?

[kokojojo]

My 5 year old daughter has had some issues, that have only gotten much worse as she gets older. I don't think I can blame it on her dad and seperating because that was when she was 2. She still sees her dad regularly and we have a healthy relationship. My fiance is a good father figure to her, as she spends most time at my house. She has always acted out, mainly with me and other family members. But here recently it's REALLY bad. She doesn't act out at school, but she's only there for 3 hours at a time, and they spend alot of time playing. So until she's really in a "sit down" environment, having to do what someone tells her, I don't know. She's been to a psychiatrist, and he really just told me the same things that different websites told me, to be consistent, sticker charts, reward good behavior, so on and so forth. I've been doing all these things for quite some time now, and it just keeps getting worse. I'm beginning to think she may have a chemical imbalance. My sister and my dad both suffer from manic depression/bipolar disorder and have been medicated for quite sometime. My daughter just is really started to remind me of my sister when we were growing up. She is really mad at the world, and then really genuinely loving. She crys at the drop of a hat, which she doesn't ever get her way when she crys so I'm not sure why she still does this. She has huge anger issues. She has never been treated this way, so some of the things that she does just down right surprise me. She back talks and is very very hateful. She's kinda like a really bad 16 year old girl, but she's 5. She's been blood tested for numerous different things, because her doctor noticed last time we were there that she is absolutely out of control. But ADD/ADHD is out of the question, she doesn't exhibit these behaviors at school. We went on a Disney cruise last year and she was so bad (hitting,screaming,throwing,crying) that she spent most of the time in timeout and didn't enjoy the trip, I was completely heartbroken. She's extremely whiny too. Please help! It's gotten to the point that my fiance and I are starting to have problems because I keep sticking to what the doctor and websites tell me to do and he wants me to get more help because what I've been doing is only making it worse.

[Tuffnready]

I can tell you that I raised a child that had the behaviors you described. She also had the same kind of behaviors at school tho. She was diagnosed with Bi-polar among other mental disorders when she got older.  I would definitely take your child to a therapist as a child with those kind of behaviors needs to beable to talk to someone outside of the family, who could help you understand ways to deal with the behaviors.

[ILADVOCATE]

Bipolar is extremely rare at that age and what you describe may not be that but poor coping skills that she would need help with. The best thing to do is for her to see a child psychologist and they could give you some ideas on what is going on and how she could be helped. Cognitive behavioral therapy could be helpful as well and one good  way to have some ideas on how to deal with these issues is to find out about family therapy as well.