Siblings and care tasks

Help siblings choose how many care-giving responsibilities they want to have.

The issue of siblings and care giving responsibilities is not a clear cut area. Some families feel that siblings should never have to do anything to help their brother or sister. Other families feel that it is expected that siblings will help with care on a regular basis.

What we have learnt from adult siblings and from older siblings attending sibling groups, is that choice about care tasks is more important sometimes than the type of care tasks, i.e. siblings like to feel in control of the amount and type of care they provide. Sometimes this will vary from day to day or at different life stages of the sibling. For example, a five year old sibling may really enjoy helping to feed her two year old brother, but may no longer enjoy this when she is nine.

Sometimes siblings feel uncomfortable about saying that they don't want to do something any more – as they know you need help and may not want to make things difficult for you. This can lead to the sibling continuing to help but feeling resentful towards you or his/her brother or sister. Help siblings decide what sort of things they enjoy doing and which things they dislike.

Try this:

• Sit down with your son or daughter and acknowledge the things that they currently do to help. Thank them for the contribution they make.
• Together, make a list of the things they already do to support their brother or sister – physical care tasks, baby/child sitting tasks, help with medical things, entertaining tasks, enabling their brother or sister to join in their games with friends. Do this on a sheet of paper.
• Next to each thing on the list, ask your child to give it a rating between 0 and 10. 0 means that they really don't like doing it at all, and 10 means it's very enjoyable.
• It is likely you will see that some things are preferred more to others
• Then have a conversation about doing less or none of the things they dislike, and getting someone else to do those. Ask if is there is something else they would like to do instead?
• This doesn't mean that your child doesn't do any household chores, however it may feel better for a sibling to do the type of things other children do at home, which are not immediate care tasks for a brother or sister.
• You will get a better idea of how your child sees care tasks and your child will feel that he/she has some choice about how things are at home

NB If your child is providing a level of care or undertaking care tasks that really should be done by an adult, he or she is a young carer. Although the support of siblings is useful and sometimes necessary, when this affects siblings' health, wellbeing or school work, please seek help from your local young carers project. Details of local projects are available by visiting http://www.youngcarer.com/showPage.php?file=projects.htm or ask a social worker or your GP to put you in touch with the young carers worker