There are special difficulties in diagnosing the child with epilepsy. Children, and especially adolescents, do behave strangely at times. At school, children with absence seizures may be accused of day-dreaming or lack of concentration, considered disobedient or inattentive. In adolescents especially, the irrational and sometimes truculent behaviour associated with partial complex seizures is often mistaken for a disorder of behaviour.But equally, there are serious consequences for the child if he or she is mistakenly diagnosed as having epilepsy when what they are actually suffering from is some other episode of disturbed behaviour. Breath-holding attacks and night terrors in young children, temper tantrums, fainting in school assembly and migraine are all sometimes confused with epilepsy.One of the most difficult things about epilepsy is its unpredictability and uncertainty. Even when your child has been diagnosed as having epilepsy, it may take some weeks before the pattern of their fits has been worked out, and the best medication for them has been found. You will want to know what the long-term prospects are for your child, and whether he or she will outgrow their epilepsy, and these are predictions that your doctor may be reluctant to make straight away. If there is a strong family history of epilepsy, the chances are good that your child will improve after adolescence or even that they will outgrow their epilepsy by the time they are 16.*66\193\2*
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