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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Friday" data-source="post: 1764388" data-attributes="member: 27208">Not really. Children are far more likely than adults to follow through with threats of violence; and are also far more likely to both voice real feelings & act on real feelings, rather than being hyperbolic; in no small part because impulse control is a learned thing / sketchy at best with kids, as is emotional monitoring and regulation, as is empathy.If she was bipolar? Then there would be times that even sketchy impulse control & self-regulation & empathy would have been impossible. So in addition to children being far more dangerous than adults? She would also be having periods of chemical maelstroms in her brain that even adults with decades of learned control have to manage with meds… because those can’t be managed by willpower or practice.***As far as being tied up, fighting, babysitting, taking out resentments on others? Yep. Those can be a totally normal part of growing up. AND they can be totally abusive. AND they can be a mix of both… where some of it is normal sibling stuff, and others are waaaaaaay past that. It’s like in adult domestic violence? Spouses can have totally normal interactions with each other, as well as totally abusive interactions with each other. Since your sister was bipolar? Smart money is on the mix of both. Since being in a bipolar mania / mixed episode falls waaaaaay outside the range of normal childhood development, with behaviors to match. What her personality was like outside of symptomatic behavior? Loving and amazing, kind and all good things? Or a cruel streak magnified by <insert all kinds of other assholeish personality characteristics> so that any moment of not-a-bitch was a fluke, rather than a central part of her & your relationship? Would determine the ratio of normal v not. It’s one of the reasons why stranger violence is so much easier to wrap one’s head around, than intimate partner violence, and violence within the family. With a stranger one only knows them in the context of their being violent. One doesn’t have memories of giggling together, and adventures, and normalcy, and often profound love… conflicting with fear, hate, violence, unpredictability, and all the rest.</blockquote>

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