Help for Siblings of Children with Special Needs
April 10, 2006
Siblings of children with chronic illnesses and developmental
disabilities are two to three times more likely than their peers
to experience psychological adjustment problems. Young children
in particular are at high risk for experiencing these kinds of
problems. To address this concern, a report published in the December
2005 issue of the Journal of Pediatric Psychology finds
that family-based group intervention can help improve the self-confidence
and knowledge of young siblings ages four to seven of children
with special needs.
“We found that participating in a group with other young
siblings and parents of children with disabilities was both educational,
therapeutic, and fun,” says lead author Debra Lobato, PhD,
with the Bradley Hasbro Children’s Research Center (BHCRC)
and Brown Medical School.
The authors explain that within their families, well siblings
may experience extra caregiver burden, differential treatment,
and an imbalance of family resources. Outside their families,
siblings may experience limited access to information about the
child’s condition, negative peer reactions, and disruptions
in social activities.
“It’s important to address the psychological and emotional
needs of this group at an early stage,” says Lobato. “Children
spend more of their lifetimes with their siblings than they do
with their parents. Siblings play a key role in one another’s
social and emotional development. They often sleep together in
the same room, eat at the same table, and go to the same school.
Our siblings are often the ones who most easily make us laugh
and cry. So, when a child has a chronic illness or disability,
brothers and sisters are likely to affect each other in both positive
and negative ways.”
Forty-three healthy siblings (ages four to seven years) of children
with chronic illness or developmental disabilities and their parents
participated in an intervention designed to address sibling challenges
that cut across all types of diagnostic conditions including autism,
Asperger’s disorder, mental retardation, cerebral palsy,
cancer and Tourette’s.
For six sessions, parents and siblings participated in two group
settings (parents with parents, children with children). The authors
measured sibling knowledge, sibling sense of connectedness with
other children in similar family circumstances, and sibling global
functioning.
The authors found that the siblings’ knowledge of the child’s
disorder and sibling “connectedness”, or the feeling
that they are not alone, increased significantly regardless of
the nature of the brother or sister’s condition. Siblings’
feelings of competence also increased. The improvements in sibling
knowledge and connectedness maintained at follow-up three months
later.
Since its inception in 1995, SibLink, the program that Lobato
started to help well siblings of children with chronic illness
or developmental disabilities, has helped over 200 families.
A prior report in 2002 found that in older children, SibLink
helped improve the participants’ knowledge about their sibling’s
illness or disability, helped them connect with others, and improved
their behavior problems at home.
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