Tricky situation when one child is extra demanding. Often in families with several siblings one particular child can be more demanding than the others. This can be for many and varied reasons and certainly if a child is somewhere on the spectrum, difficult behaviour that escalates quickly can dominate your family time and compromise your quality experiences with other members of the family.
Parents become frustrated as they deal with this ongoing and difficult matter. They feel remorse as they do not have the time or energy to give to their other children. One child's behaviour and demands overrides the needs of the others.
This article is to reflect on the other children in the family and to understand more fully their emotional response to this phenomena which impacts on their life throughout childhood.
Often children develop ways of operating when bad behaviour from another sibling occurs regularly. They may escape the scene or attempt to solve the problem for their parents. They may even get caught up with thinking that they are to blame. Whatever their reaction, there is one emotion that many children will go through and that is a feeling of anxiety for their parents going through the grief of their sibling's behaviour.
You may often hear them say to the parent,
“Are you OK mum?”
“Is everything OK?”
They may feel vulnerable and give lots more hugs or offer to do more around the house, etc. It is quite common for children to feel anxiety when they see their parent under pressure. Also tied up in this feeling is a sense of loss for the time they could have with their parent, one on one. This is a form of grief and no surprises that resentment can build in the siblings who sit by and see their parent under such duress. This is a difficult situation for parents who only want the very best for all their children and yet one child is so demanding.
Here are a few thoughts on how to reduce the other children's resentment:
Ask them:
“Sometimes mum does have a difficult time with your brother and I wonder how you feel about it?”
Also note they will be worried about you particularly.
“When you see mummy upset with your brother, are you worried about me?”
“On a scale of one to ten how worried are you?”
“Let's find ways that we can have one on one time together.”
Primarily this article is about reassuring and reducing anxiety for the other siblings who naturally feel your pain and want to help but can feel somewhat helpless. It is all about giving them the reassurance that your relationship with them is intact and that you as parent in a loving way, have the responsibility of supporting all your children no matter what their needs. It is not their responsibility to manage their difficult sibling.
As the siblings grow up, in time they understand the situation better, but the grief of the compromised relationship they had with their parents can still linger and this needs to be understood by the parents.
What you would like the siblings to reflect on later in life is that although it was hard for mum and dad to deal with the situation, they would always talk to us about its implications on their relationship and they would work on other ways of ensuring our needs were met.
Who ever said parenting was easy!