RE: siblings

October 29, 2004

Some educational agencies have support groups for siblings of a child with

special needs. I'm not sure of the age groups but check with such agencies as

Dept of Mental Health, Dept of Public Health--places like those.

I know in my state there is a movement to put in place a general support

group for the whole family.

Hope this helps.

October 29, 2004

Debbie,

My experience is from one of my foster children who came to me when she was

5. Her parents were both deaf. She had very poor speech. Her sister age

12 spoke clearly, although her writing often included ASL grammar. After

all ASL was her first language. The younger daughter did receive speech

therapy which helped quite a bit. Her writing included fewer ASL errors, I

think because she learned to write after being in a hearing home.

Kim

siblings

Hi everyone,

I don't have the literature on siblings right with me, but to summarize:

siblings often go through a period where they are embarrassed about

their brother or sister with a disability, and this is hard on them.

However, they frequently grow up to be more sensitive, caring people

than is typical, and go into human services occupations. Of course the

golden rule is to avoid making the siblings responsible for the care of

their brother or sister, beyond what an older sibling might do on

occasion for a younger sibling. And don't make them believe that when

you are gone the responsibility is going to be totally theirs. One of

them will probably choose to be responsible, but it should be their

willing choice, not the parents' expectation. The other thing to watch

out for is the belief on the part of the siblings that you have to be

ill or have a disability in order to count, or to matter, in the family.

This comes from a family systems perspective, and happens when all of

the attention is given to one family member because of some unique

characteristic (it could be athletic ability, or academic ability, as

well as a disability). Each child in the family needs to know they

matter because of who they are and what they give to the family, and

this means spending time with each child. That is hard when our

CHARGErs take so much time. We have hired college students to be with

in the early evenings so that we can spend time with Seth and

.

I don't know about the risk taking (and I missed the initial posts on

this). It may be a recognition that they should take advantage of

everything they have and have been given, because they know that not

everyone is able to do these things. My oldest son spent last year in

Siberia, and is spending this year in Taiwan. I think this is so

terrific.

Tim Hartshorne, father of , and a bunch of others

October 30, 2004

Tim,

" Each child in the family needs to know they

matter because of who they are and what they give to the family, and

this means spending time with each child. "

I fully agree with the above quote. In our family we did this and still had

many many problems with our CHARGEr's older sibling. I will never know if it is

because he was adopted ( at 3 1/2 weeks of age, which shouldn't matter but has)

or if it was because he was the older brother of a CHARGE kid. They are now 20

and 25years of age and are not close at all. I hope someday this will change.

Just adding my to cents to an ongoing mystery of CHARGE families.

Lynn