Within the last few weeks someone posted asking about the experience of people who great up in a family where there was another child with special needs/problems/illnesses – asking how that impacted the other children.
At the time I saw the thread there weren’t any replies at all. I wanted to answer, but I had to run off to work, then I forgot about it for a while :(, and now I’ve searched on everything I can think of without finding the thread.
Does anyone remember the thread? What it’s title was, the poster, anything I can use to track it down? Because I really got the feeling the poster needed to hear s/he wasn’t alone.
The closest I come to that, first-person, is that Middlebro was dyslexic and he’s always been one of those people who go from the heights of Heaven to the pits of despair, so his emotional state needed Special Handling. In our case, the person who was always sick and needing help was Mom, so that’s a completely different animal.
Since Littlebro is only two years younger, he got signed up for the same activities that were being recommended for Middlebro. Don’t ask me why was Judo supposed to help him distinguish the bdpq group, but apparently that was the reason they got signed up for it. And boy, was I pissed, since I’d wanted to sign up and hadn’t been allowed to under the excuse that it was “not an activity appropriate for girls” (later I found out it had really been about money, a response I would have been much happier with).
Other than that, it didn’t affect us a lot. Once, Middlebro and me started complaining about the special treatment He Who Can Do No Evil (aka Littlebro, aka the apple of Mom’s eyes) got; even he agreed that he could get away with things that the two of us would get hell for. Mom pointed out that “well, Middlebro gets some stuff you don’t too, Nava”, I answered “but it’s because he needs it” and the Bros nodded. Mom laughed and said “well, I’ll be, turns out they have a distributive notion of justice!” and went to cook lunch, an activity during which Thee Shalt Not Interrupt The Cook was fully in place (in other words, she hid behind a cooking pot).
I know families where one of the children (now a man in his 40s and a woman in her 30s) have Down’s Syndrome, and that had an impact on the siblings, but nowhere near as much as it would have been if the sib with health problems had been wheelchair bound or some such. Both families had one child after the one with Down’s; one family had planned to stop at number 4 but decided to go for number 5 on the doctor’s recommendation (doctors considered it helped alleviate the feelings of guilt parents got for having a kid with Down’s), the other one was of the “however many come, we’ll make room for” mindset anyway but got the same recommendation from the doctor. I’ve heard the man’s youngest sibling say “well, thing is, sometimes he’s a pain in the ass, I mean, a worse pain in the ass than the rest of my too-many elder sibs, but I wouldn’t be here without him, so what the heck.”
Their parents were quite set on “yes, this one has special needs, but that doesn’t mean we can stop caring about the rest;” from where I stand outside looking in, both families are strong and supportive of all siblings. And they weren’t “sick”, so there wasn’t a factor of people inquiring about them but not about the rest of the family, it was and is the usual “how are you? How is your family?”, not “how is Lucas?” (and to hell with the rest).
You sure? I would have noticed a thread like that in a flash.
I think it depends on what kind of special needs it is. Also how the parent and family chose to deal with it. There is a HUGE difference between having a profoundly MR kid with six million medical problems and a kid who’s “just deaf or just blind” or whatever.
I have seen a lot of parents go into “grieving mode” or " I wanted a healty normal kid" mode.
(and these are parents who are dealing with relatively mild hearing losses in their kids!)
Granted those sorts of feelings are perfectly OK when dealing with severe or profound special needs…but god, sometimes I think that a lot of parents just want a superfically “perfect” kid. :rolleyes:
I don’t remember that thread, but I remember reading an article in Time or Newsweek a few years back about how the “normal” children in a family with a bipolar child are negatively affected. I have a friend whose youngest son was diagnosed as bipolar in kindergarten, and I’ve been meaning to ask her about how this has played out in her family over the past few years. Her oldest, who has just graduated, has been a royal pain the past few years, and I wondered if there was a corelation. Of course, she might just be a royal pain because she’s a teenage girl.
This is very interesting. I’ve been doing some research on Early Onset Bipolar lately and it tends to manifest quite differently than it does in adults. Here’s a description of Bipolar in children. I can see how it would definitely put a strain on a family.
I believe that was me, in MPSIMS, titled Tell Me About Your Family, With a Sick Sibling. and no, I didn’t get one reply. I’m used to things I say on this board sinking like a rock in a deep lake, so I left it alone.
It wasn’t only my situation, horrendous as it’s been! But I’m acquainted with another family that has a disabled child, and the “normal” child is suffering from emotional neglect as the parents are occupied 24/7 with every sneeze and twitch from the disabled one. Birthdays, holidays, life’s little milestones - this poor girl is a little bitter as all these things for her are hardly acknowledged… She told me, “everything revolves around The Poor Sick Thing, and if I come home with an ‘A’, they go, “well, thank your lucky stars you’re doing good in school, TPST isn’t so lucky”. If I’m invited to the prom, they go “TPST will NEVER be able to go dancing (sob!) like you!”. I’m forever going to be in second place, and I understand, Sali, I do, but do they have to keep telling me how lucky I am? I don’t feel lucky, I feel like an afterthought.” (that was the gist of it).
My sister of 1 1/2 years younger than me is autistic. She cannot function on her own and has to live in a home constantly being monitored.
I can’t really think of a major way her being autistic impacted my life. I didn’t feel neglected in any way, at least not more than usual for being the oldest of four. Things would be kinda weird when she’d burst into screaming tantrums for seemingly no reason, which got increasingly violent as she got older, but otherwise life was fairly normal.
A friend of mine had 2 “normal” kids and everything seemed fine. A third profoundly disabled child came along and after a few years, the behavior of the oldest kinda went to hell in a handbasket. It was plain to me that the attention drain of the youngest was the cause of the problem. It was kinda sad, watching the “perfect family” slowly destruct under the emotional and financial burden.
The disabled one died suddenly (not too unexpected) and over the last couple years the family dynamic has normalized it seems. Of course, the oldest one is a teenager now, so I suspect the handbasket will be coming out of retirement.
What the hell is the facination with the damn cell phone?
saliq, that’s b/c the disabled kid was severely/profoundly affected. That is ALSO why I strongly believe in pediatric nursing home placements for those kids. Every so often I hear of families who want to adopt those kids…and while the intention is good, taking care of those kids is extremely hard, and leads to major burnout. Think an eternal baby with the added complication of a seizure disorder, or things like trachs (which require nursing) Yes,they are loving but they are also a lot of very very hard work sadly
Yes, your experience, and that of your friend, is not unique.
Let’s face it, caring for ANY child takes time, energy, and money. A child with a handicap will almost certainly require more than usual. Some parents may have a large enough supply of all three that that can deal with the added demands without taking away what their other children might normally get, but I suspect that is rare. (And of course some handicaps are ‘more demanding’ than others.)
My parents had five children. My mother was a SAHM who cooked from scratch, sewed clothes, and had tons of time to help us all with homework and our life problems. She was a cub scout den mother AND ran a girl scout troop AND helped out at church and the school library and a whole bunch of other things. My father earned enough to support us all with a just-barely lower middle class lifestyle. Yes, we had a great family life.
Until one of my younger brothers developed what were called “emotional difficulties” when he was around 8. Much later, when he was in his forties, he was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder but that wasn’t much known about when he was a child.
Tom (not his real name) was given to HORRIBLE outbursts of rage, and these could be triggered by the tiniest thing. Like one time when mom called us to the dinner table he kicked in the tv screen because she’s interrupted his concentration on whatever he was watching. He constantly got into fights, at school, with the neighbor children, with us. And I’m talking all out physical fighting, regardless of the sex/age/condition of the other person. He sent me to the emergency room twice, and I was a timid and utterly non-confrontational girl at the time.
Basically our family life was destroyed by Tom. There was a never ending series of crises. He absorbed pretty much every atom of time and energy and money my parents could scrape together trying to cope with him. They were always taking him to a new doctor, therapist, counselor, whatever. Special schools. Lawyers, because as he got bigger the damage he did was worse, plus he started stealing, breaking & entering, vandalism, drugs. Dad did overtime, and Mom had to take a job to help with the bills. They had to cash in the college savings accounts they had set up for each of us. Vacations no longer existed, toys or treats basically stopped, ‘new’ clothes meant Morgan Memorial.
Worst of all was the way all the rest of us children felt shunted aside. Our parents simply DIDN’T have any time or energy left for us – that’s just how it was. Tom got it all, we were afterthoughts at best. And we all had to tiptoe around him. Whatever he wanted, he got, because if we thwarted him we KNEW the hell that would break lose and we got blamed. Because we knew how he was, so it was our fault if we ‘started’ it.
Pretty much we all did our best to not to be home at all. We’d hang out with friends or simply find places we could be. (I spent hours at the library after school virtually every day all through middle and high school years.) And each of us got out and away as soon as we could.
Can I jump in here and say in my situation I DID have some happy memories, and it’s not a question of not loving my sibling. It never really disappears, The love IS there, but buried underneath a landslide of emotional rubble.
Can I ask, StarvingButStrong, what became of Tom? Is he still living with your parents? Did they make a plan for him, or are they going to? Because they had better, before it’s too late.
I’m disabled, and my mom has friends who have kids w/Downs. The families are just like any normal American family. I’m the middle of 5, Courtney has a younger brother, and Mark has several siblings. (unsure his rank)
It seems like the big divide between disabled siblings who, yeah, require more attention, so what–and disabled siblings who tear up the other kids’ lives–are these emotional difficulties. Even a kid that needs its diaper changed eight times a day, forever, isn’t going to siphon off energy the way one with emotional problems does.
My oldest, who is 12, is perhaps bipolar. It does affect the family dynamic, and how we interact with our other two children. He doesn’t seem to have it as severely as some, so it’s not that bad yet (knock on wood), but it’s certainly disruptive.
The bigger problem I see with special needs kids being with ordinary kids is at school. My mom’s workplace is requiring her to bring the autistic kids that throw fits into the lunchroom. Brilliant.
I’d say my sister has grown up to be one of the best people I know. I may have drug her down a bit, but she learned to overcome it. Of course, my special needs decreased as I got older, and only got worse recently with the withdrawal.
My youngest has special needs. Yep, it certainly effects the family dynamics in a not great way. Other kids don’t quite get why #3 gets some special treatment, and they don’t understand that some of the stuff they get is waaay special. It’s something that we’re all struggling with. It sucks. But it’s the way it is. I try to do the best I can by all three, while balancing needs, what I can do, work life balance, relations with my wife, etc.
A few, and sadly, not really. I don’t hate him now or anything. I hope he has a happy life. I just don’t want to be part of it. Too many really, really bad memories, and years of literally living in fear of him.
Tom basically stormed out of my parent’s house for the last time when he was 19 or so. (Our parents are now dead.) He and a friend took off for California where life would be better. :rolleyes:
I’m not clear on details, but I know he lived with (off?) a couple of different women for a while. Then he spent some years in prison (Convicted of two armed robberies of convenience stores.)
After that, don’t really know for a while. After he finally got diagnosed with Bipolar and started on medication his life seems to have settled down. He married a woman who owned a house, and he works various jobs on the janitor/maintenance/delivery man level. Not a ‘success story’ as you usually judge lives, but hey, he’s getting by, earning his living legally, and given how he started out, that probably should be counted as a win.
