You Cannot Change Anything if You Do Not Notice It

Healthy children often suffer from the circumstance that handicapped siblings receive more parental attention than they do. They keep their worries to themselves and nobody thusly notices it although talks with parents and other children would change a lot.

01/02/2008

Brothers and sisters have their own
needs © Sturm/pixelio

“I often could have needed a contact person but nobody actually knew how I felt.” (Doris, 30 years old)

Children with handicapped siblings are often struggling with conflicting feelings. Eberhard Grünzinger from the social association VDK in Bavaria reports on the following experience: These children often suffer from a guilty conscience since they are healthy and their siblings are not. But then, some children even wish to be handicapped themselves in order to get more attention. They are, however, ashamed of such thoughts.

Grünzinger advises families concerned and especially focuses on siblings of handicapped children. “They think that they are less beloved or are of less value. This feeling is mostly caused by the circumstance that they are not praised as much as their handicapped siblings whose progresses are more likely to be noticed by parents. This is often considered as unfair.” They feel responsible for their sister or brother. Compared to peers, their social consciousness is in many cases more developed because they often volunteer to help. For this reason, healthy children do not want to cause more work for their parents and behave inconspicuously and are good at school.

Thusly, one gets caught in a vicious circle: Parents do often not notice that healthy children are overstrained or feel lonely since they are very sociable. “But only if parents address their children, they will talk about it”, Grünzinger says. This would help the most and would relieve them from their worry to always feel responsible. These children need free space for themselves and also have to be able to answer no when they are supposed to help. Furthermore he emphasizes: “Healthy children have to especially partake in problems and considerations of their parents. Thusly, they do not get taken by surprise. They also should be included in the care of handicapped siblings – only in moderation, of course”.

“Neither my parents nor myself stroke on the idea that support outside the family would have possibly done me good.” (Kathrin, 28 years, with a physically handicapped sister)

German associations and organizations, like VDK Bavaria, already offer counselling and seminars for these children. “Most important is the contact to other healthy siblings”, explains Grünzinger, “it is a relief when they know that they are not the only ones in this situation.” That can help them to find their balance between worry for others and themselves.

They can swap ideas in holiday camps with other healthy siblings, at regular meetings and at offers for the whole family. “The mere idea of the parents to attend to a seminar or the like already shows the children: I am important, too”, Grünzinger says. There were, however, still very little offers for families in Germany. He receives many inquiries but most of the time he is only able to refer to websites and forums because there were no other official, national contact points.

Many parents have to get used to the thought that their children might want to talk with others about their feelings first. There are hence some seminars, in which they learn to deal with it. As long as nobody advises parents of the fact that their healthy children might miss something, they will not participate in such seminars. “Only an increasing amount of public relations can change that,” Grünzinger states. “In my experience, the media are the best possibility to call attention to siblings and their situation.” Other ways are for example advertisements for weekend seminars for families or lectures in institutions.

REHACARE.de