Encourage grandparents to support siblings

At Sibs workshops, parents often ask about how they can get grandparents to help support siblings. Some find that grandparents make themselves available to the whole family for practical help and emotional support; others find that since the diagnosis of the disability, grandparents have backed away and therefore the siblings lose out on any contact they had in the past.

When a child is diagnosed with a disabling condition, this is usually very hard for grandparents to deal with, and they may respond in a variety of ways to this; Read Contact a Family's fact sheet for grandparents which looks at area in detail http://www.cafamily.org.uk/grandparents.html

Most grandparents want to help but don't always know how best to do this. Talk to them about how things are for the sibling and let them know the sort of thing that will be helpful.

Things grandparents can do to help

• Doing an activity with the siblings that you can't do as a family (swimming, going to the cinema, having along walk in the park, help with learning to ride a bike, etc)
• Having the sibling sleep over and have an evening that is peaceful and relaxing
• Getting one to one time for attention and nurturing – being read a story, getting help with homework, cooking together, etc
• Taking the disabled child for a visit so that the siblings gets time with his or her parent
• Being available on the phone for chats about things that are concerning the sibling – this can be really good for siblings aged 10 upwards, whose grandparents are not nearby
• Let them know that their contact is really important for the sibling, and that you don't want the sibling to lose this as well as having to deal with other sibling issues