Siblings of children with disabilities: views from pilot study

The role of sibling relationship lasts for a life-time as the siblings spend more time with each other than with their parents. The sibling bond is a special one. This paper addresses the initial results from the pilot study (AprilMay, 2016) of the research on siblings of children with disabilities. Twelve face-to-face interviews were conducted with siblings without disabilities in the age group ten and nineteen. The purpose was to understand the social attitudes and relationship of the siblings without disability with their siblings with disabilities; besides knowing how well they understand their sibling‘s impairment. Nevertheless the pilot study highlighted the serendipitous finding on non-disabled sibling‘s psychological well-being. The initial result signals psychological aspects of distress, worry about future as well as their disabled sibling, lesser parental availability, confusion over their role, lack of communication between parents and non-disabled siblings. These siblings expressed positive, negative as well as mixed responses when they understood their sibling has some kind of disability. It is envisaged that the ultimate outcome of the research would lead to interventions for both the non-disabled siblings as well as the children with disabilities‘ well-being. The pilot study has shown that the well-being of siblings without disability should be taken into account because of the presence of a child with disability in the family.