I’m as desperate as the next mom for my kids to get
along. My girls are one year minus three
days apart and pretty competitive for airspace and attention so I pretty much
pray desperate prayers every day for their relationship. But I have a special hope that my girls will
love their brother in a free and unburdened way when they grow up. After all, God willing, their relationship
with him will last longer than mine. I
realize that every family is different but here are some things that I am
learning about how to help foster love and bonding between typically developing
kids and a sibling who has special needs.
1 Create and reinforce a culture of
snuggling.
When my husband and I became adoptive parents, we were taught about the significance of “skin on skin” time to bonding so we tried to maximize touch
and hugs whenever possible. In the early
days after we brought our adopted babies home, my husband used to rip off his
shirt whenever he could and hold them close to his chest.
Nowadays we try to get some time
together in jammies as a family on Mom and Dad’s California King sized bed as
much as we can during our precious, lazy weekend moments. Sometimes we read quietly. Sometimes someone will read a book aloud. Sometimes Josh will request
a song that we sing part of and he sings part of like "He'll be coming
'round the mountain . . ." or "This little piggy". Josh
will ask to sing or say it over and over until I have to put a stop to it in order to not lose my mind.
Being
autistic, Josh has a limited tolerance for being around other people,
especially when the girls were more wiggly and vocally eruptive. But Josh appreciates the sensory input of
this kind of family time. He loves having
his head and face rubbed and getting to smell his mama’s hair so he’s willing
to be us for short periods of time. Whole family snuggle times are some of the happiest times in our life together.
The other
day, Hope and I woke up inexplicably early and so we decided to invade Josh’s
bed to snuggle with him. Touch is a nice
way to connect, especially with a mostly non-verbal person. After a few blissful minutes, Hope said to me,
“You know what, Mama? When I grow up, I
want to marry someone who can help me take care of Josh.” I told her how much I appreciated that and
that I expect that there will be a lot of people in Josh’s life who will help
to take care of him. And then I smiled and almost cried for the rest of the day.
2 Debrief stressful moments.
My
husband and Hope were out of town for Halloween this year so it was just Josh,
Anna and me left at home to take on trick or treating. We had plans to walk around our neighborhood
with one other family. Everyone had been
prepped with the knowledge that Josh might not make it walking around in the
dark with crowds of other people around.
Indeed, he lasted about 7 houses before having a major crying, screaming
meltdown on the sidewalk. (He was
unhappy that I wouldn’t let him eat every piece of candy immediately upon
receiving it.) The other family
graciously offered to take Anna with them while I walked Josh home. Anna was very motivated to stay on the
mission of pursuing a more ample stash of candy so she was willing to go
without me.
Later, at
bedtime, I asked her how she felt about Josh’s public meltdown and having to
trick or treat without a parent with her.
Her emotions were complex and layered.
It was good to get to talk about the evening in retrospect. In the end, she seemed to come to a place of
satisfaction and declared it the “best Halloween ever”. I think that getting some space to talk about
how it was for her enabled her to ultimately focus on the good parts and let go
of the bad parts.
3 Try to give each child
their own special times.
I am
aware that Josh and his needs invade a lot of Hope and Anna’s lives. They have both spent more than their share of
their lives being schlepped along to Josh’s medical or therapeutic
appointments. There are a lot of things
that our family can’t do because of Josh.
Their brother often takes more than his fair share of their parents’
attention.
I have
found that it’s important for my girls to each have special time where they get
to have our undivided, undistracted attention.
For example, this year each girl got to have their own small birthday
parties (In the past we’ve had a larger, joint one because their birthdays are
so close together). Significantly, their
brother did not come. He would not have
enjoyed Anna’s soap making party or Hope’s movie watching party anyways. But the critical piece was that I was able to
fully focus on the birthday girl each time without needing to make sure that
Josh was not overwhelmed or eating non-food items when we weren’t
watching.
For the
past two Easters, the girls have received gift certificates in their Easter
baskets for a special overnight with one parent at a local location of their
choosing. This has been a special way to
get to have experiences that the five of us could never have because of who
Josh is. Anna and I went to a small
amusement park about an hour away. Hope
and her dad explored Alcatraz in San Francisco. Both trips were definitely good deposits into the love tank. Both sets of us came home with a sense of overflowing with stories and affection to spare and share.
Well, those are a few of my
ideas thus far in our journey. Do you
have any other suggestions for us? We
are eager to hear your ideas and stories.
