Autism And Non-Autistic Sibling

679 Words2 Pages

Autism is currently affecting 1 in 150 children, but children who suffer from the effects of Autism are much higher. In a family with more than 1 child who have a child with Autism, the effects on the non-autistic sibling can be life long.

For a family whose Autistic sibling is the eldest, it creates an entirely different family structure with the younger non-autistic child either taking on a caregiver or guardianship role or emulating the behaviours of the child with Autism.

Children with Autism take up a lot of the parent's time and energy often leaving little for the younger non-autistic sibling. Sometimes a non-autistic younger sibling feels that they have to compete for their parents attention and that the extra attention somehow means …show more content…

They may not always like what they do, but, they will understand that the child with Autism is part of the family and will love them as such. They may take on a caregiver role, speaking for them, helping them with things etc and therefore the roles of older and younger sibling will be reversed.

Having children with Autism in the family can also sometimes lead to social isolation. It is difficult at best to take a child with Autism on some outings as sometimes their behaviours are not socially acceptable, e.g. the screaming and the flapping. Despite recent media attention about Autism, there remains quite a large number of the public who still are uneducated and look upon Autistic children as being naughty and undisciplined with bad parents.

For families with little or no outside help, it means less time going out as a family and also, unfortunately, less time that the non-autistic child gets to do things that other children their age are …show more content…

Explaining to them that the older child is not always in control of what they do and that just because they behave in such a way, it does not make it right. Encourage the non-autistic sibling to discuss their feelings and encourage them to come up with ways that they can help out, thereby freeing up a bit more of their parents time for

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