Reply to When you have a bright toddler and a family history of both genius and mental illness.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I mean, these are your genes. There is nothing you can do to prevent mental illness. You can talk about it and destigmatize treatments so suicide is less likely, though.[/quote]

As a childfree person with a family history of Personality disorders and schizophrenia, I wonder why you decided to have children? Just seems quite dumb to reproduce knowingly and fret about having a child with mental problems in the future. Not being mean, just saying.[/quote]

Right. They should build a time machine and go back in time to 3 years ago to warn themselves against getting pregnant.

[/quote]

NP. In my case, both children (and DILs) were lied to by MIL and the other adults in the family purposefully lied about the history of mental illness in their family because it is so severe that the vast majority of sane people would decline to date-marry-reproduce with them to create children related to both parents biologically. Other DIL went ahead without testing and has significant issues with both her children.

You don't always know beforehand because people lie and generic testing doesn't necessarily cover this. I know other people who have chosen to not have biokids because of heritable disorders. It's a valid ethics question based on quality of life.

A PP is also incorrect -% of the risk is heritable. That is not the same as having the remainder % be the risk of having it. There are other charts that will break down risk factors (like season of birth) and distance from the schizophrenic or bipolar relative that give a more accurate risk of the child having it.

Beforehand, I'd get the spouse tested specifically for the variants known to be associated with these diseases because some have outsize impact and that weighs into my decision. If you already have the child then you still follow some of the recommended protocols (like VitD supplementation) and just do your best to avoid environmental triggers (head trauma, etc).

I think the peds recommendation is correct. I was much happier after l I placed into a gifted program. People forget that gifted children are special needs too. My original school didn't have anything at all so my program was through a local university. They didn't start accepting students until second grade, though.[/quote]

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