The early signs

Last night my now twelve year old daughter showed the first real signs of mania. I've always suspected she might have inherited her father's bipolar condition, as she has always been emotional to the extremes about things, and even more so over the past year. I want to take her in to the clinic to get diagnosed, but I'm not sure if that would make it worse at this point. I don't want doctors to start experimenting with different drugs on her undeveloped mind and growing body. Last week, she was out for three days because of a sprained ankle - the school wouldn't let her bring crutches. over the weekend she had two nights of sleepovers and her birthday party, so she had to spend this week getting caught up on all her assignments. Which happened last night.  I've let her stay up late to finish homework before, but she's always paid for it in crabbiness and the need to sleep in. Something wasn't quite right before that, when I came home she kept asking if there was something wrong and if I was depressed. I'm not, I've just had to many short nights and long days in a row and I'm tired. I didn't feel like running off to the store for her or the library or anywhere else. I made coffee for us since she had too much work to finish before bedtime, helped her through science, geography, and some Language arts, laid down at ten and told her I would call her to bed in an hour and she was to go whether she finished or not.  She says she went to bed at twelve. Then she got up at five, and brought the laundry in from the laundry room. Both loads. then she sorted them, then she woke me up as 6:30. Then she bounced off the walls until 8, coming up with all these ideas and plans she wanted to carry through, until she convinced me to bring her to school early. She is going to crash. And I'm going to be picking up pieces of her all over the place. I never wanted to go through this again, as I did with her father.