Autistic Children and Their Siblings

Sibling Fun

Today I walked into school today, and realize I'm locked out of my classroom.  I am fortunate enough to not only work at an excellent school, but I'm also lucky that my twins go there too.  Our fantastic school counselor walks in a minute later and sees me sitting on the bench in front of the office.  She has been amazing with the work she has done with Michael.  I absolutely love her!  She immediately helps me open my door and says, "I've been meaning to touch base with you as a mom, not as a teacher."  My first thought was, "Oh it must be something to do with Michael."  Much to my surprise it wasn't about Michael at all.  It was about Mikayla.

The counselor then explains to me that Mikayla has been having some trouble dealing with frustration.  She has been quick to anger and can often have an attitude.  The counselor wants to put her in a group to work on managing the frustration and anger.  I immediately agree.  Now Mikayla will also be seeing the counselor once a week in a small group.  I'm very thankful for this.

Brother & Sister Love

I see Mikayla's anger/frustration issues as a combination of problems.  The first is that she is very bossy.  Her personality has been like that from the beginning.  She is constantly telling Michael what to do and acting "like a parent".  Secondly she is experiencing a conductive hearing loss right now, and it is a whopper of a hearing loss.  I know from teaching Deaf and hard of hearing children for a good portion of my career that she is probably exhausted trying to strain and hear what the teacher is saying all day. When you are tired you are likely to be grumpy and not handle issues well.  Then there is her independence, she doesn't want help from anybody.  She wants to do everything herself.  Finally I believe she is having issues because she is the sibling of an autistic brother.  I'm sure that many siblings who have a brother or sister in special education, or who have differences have some of their own emotional or behavioral issues.

Mikayla showing Michael how to dye Easter eggs

Since Michael is always being "reminded" of what to do or "cued in", Mikayla strives hard to be the opposite.  Michael is the one who needs help on a constant basis.  Help to tie his shoes, help to "check in", help to calm down after a melt down.  Mikayla again is the exact opposite.  She doesn't want help with anything and often refuses help.  Michael, although extremely intelligent, gets some extra attention.  I believe we try very hard to even out the attention, but Mikayla feels otherwise.   Mikayla feels like Michael gets more attention, so she is going to act out a bit to get attention too.  Bad attention is better than little or no attention at all, right?

I came to the realization today that siblings of autistic children might need to have some counseling or some time to work out their issues.  They need strategies, just as much as their autistic brother or sister.  They might need help to work out issues and deal with problems too.  Having an autistic child in the family can be stressful for the "normal" child in the family.  Even though Michael is probably the easiest spectrummy child I've ever dealt with, I'm sure that it still affects Mikayla in ways I've never realized.