Teach Siblings to Understand Asperger Syndrome

It has been two years since my oldest son was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome and while we have all come a long way since that day, it has become obvious to us that our younger son (there is only a year between the two) has had to go down a much longer road to get to the point where he can understand his brother.

When we first discussed the difficulties our older child faced, our younger son didn't want to hear them. He didn't want to know that there was something different about his brother. He cried for many nights after, grieving the loss of his idea of what an older brother should be like. He became so depressed and upset over the diagnosis that I took him to see the psychiatrist who had diagnosed my older son. She reassured him that all his feelings were normal, it was okay to feel stressed by this development and suggested ways in which he could deal with his feelings.

After the grieving stage came the anger. This was a very difficult stage for us to deal with. He wouldn't even look at his brother except to glare at him from time to time. He wouldn't speak to his brother unless he had to, and when he did, he spoke in a really rude tone of voice. There were many times when we had to step in and "have a talk" with him about his attitude. Finally, when we pointed out that his behaviour wasn't helping the situation at home and that we needed him to be more accepting of his brother, he settled down.

His first steps into trying to understand Asperger Syndrome came in the form of questions. He would ask why his brother behaved a certain way, or did a certain thing and we would answer as best as we could. Then he started to make statements like "My brother does that because he hates change". As situations arose, we explained them to our son and he developed an understanding of Asperger Syndrome. When the children at school asked him why his older brother was a "freak", he wouldn't say a word. At the end of the day he would tell us these stories and we would make suggestions about how to deal with these situations. While this issue of the other children calling his brother names still makes him very uncomfortable, he no longer responds by taking out his anger on the family.

Over the past year we have made a point of teaching our younger son about the communication difficulties his brother has. With the literal interpretation of words being the cause of many disagreements between them, my younger son can often stop an escalating fight by using humour or word play to diffuse the situation. Two years ago this would have been impossible.

Don't misunderstand me, it has not been easy to explain the intricacies of Asperger Syndrome to a 10 year old sibling but I am glad now that we did. The boys get along much better than they have for several years and the younger one is providing much needed support and understanding for the older one.

For some interesting sites about siblings of children with special needs, please visit these:

http://www.cafamily.org.uk/siblings.html

http://www.chtop.com/archfs23.htm

http://www.bloorviewmacmillan.on.ca/abou...

http://www.bluesuitmom.com/family/parent...