As a parent, it can be difficult to know how to support your disabled or neurodivergent child and their sibling to spend positive time together.
Things we recommend are:
- Having a set time of day which is for playing together and making it clear when it is time for your sibling child to have time to be on their own. Some families make a picture timetable for the fridge of what will happen during the day.
- Teaching siblings ways that their brother or sister can join in a game to their best ability – siblings are often very imaginative about coming up with ideas for this – keep a list of activities that work well.
- Teaching your disabled child ways to play or take part in a game or activity. If your son or daughter has a short attention span or finds it hard to follow rules, show siblings how to do a very short game together.
- Showing your children ways to communicate that they want to do something with the other child – using words or signs or pictures
- Helping your children learn to recognize whether another child is enjoying or not liking an activity – through identifying facial expressions, sounds, or gestures.
- Noticing when they do play or interact well together and reward that behaviour through an affectionate hug, or a positive statement “That looks like fun”, or through joining in with them.
Ideas for games together
Sometimes siblings find it hard to know what to play with their brother or sister. Here are a few ideas for fun activities. Ask the children for their ideas; they will be able to think of others.
Keep a list of ideas on the fridge and whenever they get bored you can suggest one from the list.
Music stuff
- Listen to music
- Singing
- Clapping songs
- Dance to the music then run/wheel to the mat when the music stops
- Karaoke
Story stuff
- Listen to an audio story together
- Put some household things in a bag and make a story from these props
- Parent reads story aloud and children make funny faces for the characters or act out the story
Throwing stuff
- Ball games
- Throwing the bean bag into a bucket
- Play with balloons – draw faces on them and then play throw and catch
- Make newspaper snowballs and throw them at each other
Style stuff
- Hairstyling and makeup
- Painting nails
- Collecting fashion pictures from magazines