Siblings of children with neurodevelopmental and mental health issues face complicated and conflicting emotions. How are they best navigated?
When Joanne* was 13 years old, she invited a friend home from school to work on an assignment. They had barely gotten through some initial research when Joanne’s younger sister, who had an intellectual disability, became “fixated” on using the computer, which she did not know how to use.
“I kept [saying] no because I had my friend over and she lost it,” Joanne recalls. “She was screaming and throwing things and kept following us through the house. We had to call my friend’s dad to come pick her up because we weren’t going to get anything done.”
