April 1, 2016
While I was reading our assigned text by Anne Fadiman, I was struck by the amount of responsibility that was assumed by Lia's siblings. True, Mia and the other siblings provided and shouldered the physical care and parental responsibility for Lia when their parents could not. They became caretakers, translators and a network of support (Fadiman, 2012). As a special educator and through social contacts, I have seen this family dynamic repeated (not to the same extent necessarily), in many of the families that have a child with a cognitive impairment.
My daughter's roommate in college has an older sister who has Autism. The dynamics of the family have been impacted by the physical needs of the eldest sibling. The parents, who are divorced maintain a house for the siblings and home for each of themselves. In order to have consistency for the oldest daughter, the visitation of the parents occurs in the original home with the parents coming and staying during different weeks. The typical sibling's choice of profession, working for a non-profit (Easter Seals) and summer employment (providing respite care for families with children with Autism) have been influenced by her experiences of having a sibling with Autism. Through the four years that my daughter has known her roommate, we have had some interesting conversations concerning special education services, her sister's experiences in public education, state funding, public laws and her summer job. Given these experiences of working in special education, encounters with siblings of children with special needs and our reading selection, my major assessment deals with the impact of children with developmental disabilities on the sibling dynamics of the family.
The subtopic selected is the role of typical female siblings and their relationships with their siblings with developmental delays. This encompasses the dynamics of the siblings as well as the dynamics of the relationships between the parents and the children. Seltzer, Greenberg, Orsmond & Lounds (2005) indicated in their research that the gender of the sibling plays a role in the amount of involvement that siblings have with their siblings who have a disability. Female siblings tend to provide more support and establish a caretaking role more often than that of their male sibling counterparts.
Some preliminary questions I have for this topic are:
How do the typical siblings describe their relationship with their siblings with disabilities?
What roles/responsibilities have they assumed?
When did they notice that they began help their sibling?
Is the female caretaking role due to the maternal patterning in family dynamics?
Why do typical female siblings assume the adult caretaking as their parents age?
How does this impact the family dynamics as they proceed through different developmental stages?
How does this affect them psychologically?
How does the disability affect the sibling dynamics?
Does the role of the typical sibling vary depending upon culture?
References:
Fadiman, A. (2012). The spirit catches you and you fall down: A Hmong child, her American
doctors, and the collision of two cultures. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Seltzer, M., Greenberg, J., Orsmond, G.& Lounds, J. (2005). Life course studies of siblings of individuals with developmental
disabilities. Mental Retardation 43, (5), pp. 354-359.
Retrieved: http://www.aaiddjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1352/0047- 6765(2005)43%5B354%3ALCSOSO%5D2.0.CO%3B2
My daughter's roommate in college has an older sister who has Autism. The dynamics of the family have been impacted by the physical needs of the eldest sibling. The parents, who are divorced maintain a house for the siblings and home for each of themselves. In order to have consistency for the oldest daughter, the visitation of the parents occurs in the original home with the parents coming and staying during different weeks. The typical sibling's choice of profession, working for a non-profit (Easter Seals) and summer employment (providing respite care for families with children with Autism) have been influenced by her experiences of having a sibling with Autism. Through the four years that my daughter has known her roommate, we have had some interesting conversations concerning special education services, her sister's experiences in public education, state funding, public laws and her summer job. Given these experiences of working in special education, encounters with siblings of children with special needs and our reading selection, my major assessment deals with the impact of children with developmental disabilities on the sibling dynamics of the family.
The subtopic selected is the role of typical female siblings and their relationships with their siblings with developmental delays. This encompasses the dynamics of the siblings as well as the dynamics of the relationships between the parents and the children. Seltzer, Greenberg, Orsmond & Lounds (2005) indicated in their research that the gender of the sibling plays a role in the amount of involvement that siblings have with their siblings who have a disability. Female siblings tend to provide more support and establish a caretaking role more often than that of their male sibling counterparts.
Some preliminary questions I have for this topic are:
How do the typical siblings describe their relationship with their siblings with disabilities?
What roles/responsibilities have they assumed?
When did they notice that they began help their sibling?
Is the female caretaking role due to the maternal patterning in family dynamics?
Why do typical female siblings assume the adult caretaking as their parents age?
How does this impact the family dynamics as they proceed through different developmental stages?
How does this affect them psychologically?
How does the disability affect the sibling dynamics?
Does the role of the typical sibling vary depending upon culture?
References:
Fadiman, A. (2012). The spirit catches you and you fall down: A Hmong child, her American
doctors, and the collision of two cultures. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Seltzer, M., Greenberg, J., Orsmond, G.& Lounds, J. (2005). Life course studies of siblings of individuals with developmental
disabilities. Mental Retardation 43, (5), pp. 354-359.
Retrieved: http://www.aaiddjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1352/0047- 6765(2005)43%5B354%3ALCSOSO%5D2.0.CO%3B2