Don’t Forget the Siblings
Written by: Abby Clattenburg
When I was 11 my sister was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. I can still remember exactly where I was sitting on the couch when my parents had sat us all down. I remember the “out-of-body” feeling that you get with crushing news like that. I remember the heaviness I felt in my chest and the acknowledgement that everything about my life and my family’s life was about to change.
At 11 years old I didn’t fully understand the logisitics of cancer and what it was doing to my sisters body. I didn’t understand the science of chemotherapy or radiation therapy. What I did understand was the severity of the situation. I felt the fear and sadness. I saw sorrow and strength in my parents eyes. I saw my sister wrestling life and death questions and realities everyday. I saw my brother under the weight of “what do I do to help?”
A lot of the time when families walk through traumas such as this, there is a misconception that children don’t understand what is going on, or worse, that they don’t feel it the same as adults. I think that we forget that the resilience of a child doesn’t shield or isolate them from a situation. Children often adapt and become flexible because they don’t know anything different. The problem with this misconception is we can often times, with good intentions, isolate the siblings from the family trauma.
As an 11 year old who’s sister was sick, I often experienced people welling-up with tears to grieve the news of my sister’s illness with my parents and rush straight to my sister to hug her or tell her how strong she was. I had people come up to my siblings and I to ask my sister how she was and then continue walking away once they got their answer. If people did come up to my brother or I, it was to tell us how strong my sister and parents were, or to ask us how they were doing.
None of these things are bad or wrong in the slightest. In fact, I am deeply grateful for the deep compassions of those who could grieve with my family in my sisters illness and encourage my parents and sister.
The thing I felt was missing through these interactions was a sense of belonging to my family’s situation. I felt on the outside of pain that was as real to me as my own heartbeat. I felt that my brother and I were assumed to be okay because we weren’t “the sick one.” The reality of being a sibling of a critically-ill child is that all “normal-kid-things” go out the window the moment you hear the news that your sibling is ill. You repeat your old hobbies or try to get lost in activities but it’s not the same as it was.
I think that it is so important that when we know of a family that is walking through a critical illness that we don’t forget that the siblings are a part of that too. They might not understand the medical jargon or the nitty-gritty details of everything, but they understand the feelings. They can identify the chaos of nothing being the way it used to be. They can sense people treating them differently than they used to.
A great way to help a sibling of a critically-ill child is to invest in them with your time and caring questions.
Here are a few question ideas:
How are you doing?
Has school changed a lot since _______?
Who do you talk to about how you’re doing?
What is it like having a sibling in the hospital?
How can I help you have a great day today?