Family Matters: Caring for siblings and partnerships in challenging times

Dr. Rita Eichenstein: Here’s something to think about. How many pediatricians’ offices don’t have enough seats for both parents to sit there? 

Kendra: That’s our friend psychologist, Dr. Rita Eichenstein. 

Dr. Rita Eichenstein: You know, there’s a table for the child and maybe one chair is an afterthought. Well, look, a child doesn’t come in like a patient, this is a whole universe entering. Sometimes the grandma comes… you know, when I was seeing people in my office, I had a giant waiting room [before the pandemic] because it was like a party out there. We have the little siblings in their strollers, and the moms and the dads and the grandparents. 

Kendra: And why does everyone come? 

Dr. Rita Eichenstein: A child is a family construct. It’s not an isolated, broken finger.

Kendra: You’re listening to A Little Easier. I’m Kendra Wilde. What I wish I’d known earlier in my own journey, is that challenges with one child can affect the whole family. Understanding that can do a couple of things. It can help us pay attention to everyone’s needs. That’s most of what we’ll talk about this time on A Little Easier. But Dr. Nicole Beurkens also reminds us that paying attention to families can actually help us come together to find the right solution for the one who’s struggling.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: The reality is that in order to address the challenges and the issues, we have to be looking at the family system. We need to look at that because parents hold the keys to so many of the positive changes and interventions. It just does no good for me as a practitioner to make a list of recommendations of “here’s the things that are gonna help your child” if I haven’t done any assessment or dug into it all. What is the likelihood that this family is in a situation to actually be able to do this? And where do I need to start with them? 

Kendra: In Dr. Nicole’s practice, finding a treatment plan is a collaboration. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: Here’s some options. Here’s some things I think might be helpful. Here’s what these things would entail. Give me feedback. How does that sound to you? Does that sound doable? Does that sound overwhelming? Like I need to be collaborating with them. And the sign of a really, really excellent and appropriate treatment plan is not just that it fundamentally addresses what’s going on for the child, but that it takes into account what is doable and manageable and can actually happen in the context of the family system.

Kendra: So everyone matters in a family. All this pressure can be a lot for marriages and partnerships. In this episode, we’re going to dig into how it affects them. And a little caution here. We’re gonna hear some difficult and intimate stories later on that you might find upsetting. But first we’re going to talk about siblings.

When you have a child who requires more of your attention, how does that affect your other kids? What do brothers and sisters wish we knew? To find out, we’re going to hear the stories of two people who advocate for siblings. One’s a mother with a complicated family who’s managing many different sibling relationships. And the other is a sibling herself, who’s taken her experiences and turned them into her vocation in life. 

Emily Holl: So my name is Emily Holl and being a sibling is a big part of my identity, has been for my whole life. My brother by the way is two years older than I am. He has an intellectual disability, and, you know, he’s just the coolest. And don’t, don’t tell him that I said that because his head will get even bigger. But we’ve always had a close relationship and, uh, a love-hate relationship sometimes as close siblings will. 

Jeniece Dortch: My name is Jeniece. Jeniece Dortch. I’m recently remarried. Uh, my husband is Thomas. We have six kids between us, so we are a big happy family. And big. My second oldest is Christian and he has autism and epilepsy. He was diagnosed with autism at two and epilepsy around the same exact time. [Singing the ABC’s together] People will say he’s nonverbal, but he does communicate. And we’re always learning new ways to communicate with.

Emily Holl: My brother is really at the center of many of my personal and professional decisions.

And I’m the lucky person who gets to be the Director of the Sibling Support Project. We are the first national organization in the United States that’s dedicated entirely to supporting brothers and sisters of people with special developmental health and mental health concerns. 

Jeniece Dortch: I founded Special Needs Siblings when I was pregnant with the twins. And I realized that, uh, Ooh, there’s a lot that goes on with our siblings. And I started looking for support and realized there wasn’t a lot of stuff out there and it really just started as an Instagram account and Facebook. It grew into this beautiful organization of siblings supporting siblings and raising awareness for the siblings and our families.

Emily Holl: We were founded by Don Meyer. He created this amazing thing called a SipShop to help young brothers and sisters first of all, meet one another, um, receive information and, and support and learn about the disabilities that their brothers and sisters have. [sound of children in a SibShop group] Many siblings grow up, feeling very isolated, feeling that their peers couldn’t possibly understand what’s going on in their homes. 

Jeniece Dortch: I think another thing that’s challenging, I feel like sometimes for siblings is communicating with their parents, how they’re really feeling. His brother Caleb, he started asking me to take medicine and he was like, I wish I was sick and I want some medicine too, just like Christian. And at first I was so hurt and I was so dismissive and like, How dare you say something like that, why would you wanna be sick? And then I had to sit back and like, ask myself, why is he asking these questions? And that’s, that’s really what started the journey is the kids themselves. 

Emily Holl: So very young siblings, they need to know two things. They need to know that they didn’t cause the disability and they can’t catch the disability. Because if I am four and I can catch my sister’s strep throat, why would I not be able to catch her spina bifida as well? Right. Likewise, we know many, many young siblings who think that maybe something they said or did cause their sibling’s disability. A really tough thing to carry around for a little person, or for anyone. 

Jeniece Dortch: You think someone on the surface is looking, they look fine, but the fact is inside there’s probably a lot of torment going on and turmoil in trying to find themselves in a space that parents are still trying to find themselves. So that permission – can I even have a bad day? Are my days valid? Because they’re not as bad as my brother’s days, but I still really had a tough time at school. So how do I, how do I say that without feeling selfish?

Emily Holl: Particularly with kids with disabilities, daily routines are so centered around the child with a disability, that it’s easy for siblings to feel sort of lost and invisible. And so siblings who tell us they fare well in the resentment department, one of the things they say their parents did growing up, they created something else that the family could connect over. So maybe music or sports, or maybe it was camping or hiking, but something brought them together besides just this disability. 

Jeniece Dortch: So a lot of siblings are super empathetic. I mean, they can feel things, they see things. But then they also, the joy is like sometimes they see their siblings in ways that their parents don’t. So they’re not, they’re not gonna give that extra, like, oh, it’s okay, Johnny. It’s not okay. Like, no, they’re like, that’s still my brother and I’m still angry with him and he better leave my stuff alone or I’m gonna kick him. And that’s okay. Like you gotta like give room for that tug of war. 

Emily Holl: You know, sometimes parents come to us and they say, My child wouldn’t need a SibShop. My child’s doing great. They’re getting straight A’s in school and they’re on the debate team and they’re playing sports. And I always say, oh, those are the ones you really need to worry about. I’m kind of joking, but I’m kind of not. Because those are the children who really need to know that it’s okay not to be perfect.

Jeniece Dortch: I know my daughter had a conversation with me before and she was like, mom, sometimes you get really snappy and I know you’re busy, but maybe if you could just say, like, I’m doing something right now and I’ll get right back to you instead of just like, no, no, no. It’s just one of those things that you like kind of take and you’re like, ugh. But realizing that you can apologize to your kids and still be a parent like. You can say I’m sorry. And show your kids that it’s okay to make mistakes. 

Emily Holl: So many of us are helpers and we genuinely want to assist and help lighten the load for other people. And that’s a beautiful way to be in life. Right. But I think many siblings grow up feeling that they put their own needs second, and that really impacts them later in life.

Jeniece Dortch: I think we’ve grown a lot from where we were. And now we’re hitting teenage years. So it’s tough. Like, I think this is gonna be a tough season, a challenging season. But I’m hopeful because I’ve seen so many siblings as adults and I hear their stories and I know that no matter how difficult it is right now, children are resilient and they’ll eventually find their way

Kendra Wilde: Siblings aren’t the only people in a family who can feel the impact of a child with higher needs. Often, this kind of challenge has a drastic impact on marriages and partnerships. You’re getting tugged in so many different directions and you’re each going through your own emotional adjustment. Sometimes it can be hard – or impossible – to hold it together.

Joanna: Yeah. I’m, it’s hard to know for me where to begin. I mean, my husband, I keep calling him my husband. I don’t know what to call him because we’re in, in between. We’re separated with the intention of divorce. I mean, he’s with someone else. Um, and, um, that’s, um, you know, that’s why he left.

Kendra: When they were still together, Joanna and her husband adopted two girls who both have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Reactive Attachment Disorder.

Joanna: I’m still wrapping my mind around that. Like how that affected our marriage. I know that it has everything to do with how we went our separate ways. I kept thinking that I needed to make more and more time for him to take care of himself, so that he would be okay. And, um, and then I was left with nothing.

Kendra: At the time I talked with Joanna, a lot of this was still very raw and unresolved for her. She was gracious in allowing me a window into how she was rethinking her life as a single parent of two children with significant challenges. 

Joanna: It’s still critical for me to go back to my own separateness and not think about Nate. And not spend all this time, like what I could have done to fix it and how I could, how I could help him now. And how, how the girls, they’re gonna drown now that they have two parents that adopted them, that like couldn’t even stay together… for, you know, just the negative stuff. Again, it’s comparing my idea of what things “should” be like versus working with what I have.

Kendra: In the end, Joanna acknowledges that neither of them really realized what they were up against at the time.

Joanna: I think we tried, you know, I think both of us really tried. And the role that, PTSD played in our family, like Nate had it, I had it, and the girls. And so it’s very, very hard to live like that. I don’t know how families do it. I really don’t. Like how they stay together when there’s that much trauma. 

Kendra: And there’s this extra layer of hardship when the rest of the world just doesn’t understand. Mantu Joshi says that’s particularly true when kids struggle with things you can’t see, like mental health, developmental and behavioral challenges. The exact situation, Joanna and her husband faced.

Mantu Joshi: Things that are invisible to other people. Um, especially if a child’s needs are neuro behavioral, where other people don’t know what’s going on, that it’s hidden. That can be brutal on a marriage or partnership. And in fact, this is an interesting part of the research I found was that in partnerships where the disability was more obvious, the rates of separation are actually less than typical couples. And so there’s something about the way that we interact with the world and the pressures that the world puts on us, that doesn’t understand what we’re going through, that’s really hard on partnerships and marriages. 

Merriam Saunders: There is a lot of unspoken grief when you have a child with struggles. And there are lots of different stages of grief. And you and your partner might not be going through the same stage at the same time. So you might have one partner who’s in absolute denial while you know, the other partner’s in anger. And so, you know, that’s gonna cause some conflict. 

Kendra: We last heard from author and therapist, Merriam Saunders when we spoke about “secret feelings.” She says along with managing grief, one of the biggest challenges she sees in marriages is a clash of parenting styles. 

Merriam Saunders: A lot of times couples who are working with me, one parent will be very passive. Another parent will be very authoritarian. And the poor child falls right in the middle because the passive flexible parent is constantly over-doing for the child. And the authoritarian parent is constantly yelling at the child. You do as I say, just because I say it. That right there is probably the single biggest struggle. The different parenting approach. The passive parent tends to think that they need to protect this child from the authoritarian parent. And the authoritarian parent thinks you are raising a weak child eho’s never gonna listen to anyone.

Kendra: Alongside parenting conflicts can come problems balancing time off or self care for each parent. This is a concept that Merriam calls the “happiness bucket.” 

Merriam Saunders: There can be this feeling that there’s only a, there’s a finite amount of happiness to be had, and that you’re competing you know, for that amount with your partner. So partners can get resentful, you know. What do you mean, you wanna go play golf? You just went out with your friends Friday night. I haven’t had a break in three days. Instead of, gosh, how great for you to be able to play golf. And I’m exhausted. Could we also possibly schedule a time for me to get a break. So really just continuing to support each other. Instead of seeing each other as rivals over this happiness bucket,

Philip Cowan: it’s very hard to be loving and nurturing in a relationship when you’re depressed, angry, and anxious. It, it really is. 

Kendra: This is Philip Cowen, who along with his wife, Carolyn Pape Cowan is a legend in the field of couple’s research and child development. As professors of psychology at UC Berkeley, they designed group interventions for couples to strengthen family relationships and help parents and children live healthier and more satisfying lives.

Philip Cowan: It’s not that arguments are terrible. It’s not even that conflict is terrible. It’s what you do. It’’s how you deal with it and how you resolve it. 

Kendra: The Cowan’s have conducted three major studies into how couple’s relationships and father’s involvement affects children. Carolyn told me their interest in the subject actually started decades ago when they had their own first child.

Carolyn Pape Cowan: What had happened to our relationship as a couple seemed a little mysterious to us and things were getting a little bit, um, tense and concerning to us. And then over the next few years, as we began to talk to other families and other parents, we clearly weren’t the only ones. So we got the idea of trying to work with couples. 

Philip Cowan: Actually Carolyn got the idea.

Carolyn Pape Cowan: Couples who were about to have a first baby to start at the beginning of their family, and see if we could walk with them through the transition to first time parenthood. 

Kendra: Here’s another way to look at it. 

Philip Cowan: Having a baby is a minor to major earthquake in a couple’s relationship. And so there’s a lot of stress involved. There’s a lot of joy involved. But what we were focusing on that people didn’t seem to know, is that it really is a time when couples change.

Kendra: One study that the Cowans conducted looked specifically at low income parents who had financial stresses on top of the universal psychological stress of becoming new parents.

Philip Cowan: Satisfaction with the relationship goes down, for quite a long, number of years actually. The quality of the relationship between the parents affects the child directly, especially if the couples are in high conflict. Kids get scared, and if couples are frozen and don’t talk to each other, kids get scared and think that the problem is because of them.

Carolyn Cowan: The atmosphere between the parents, that’s the atmosphere in which these kids are developing. And what they take from that is, you know, different, very important messages about one, whether they’re worthy of being loved and cared for, but also, whether when one has a problem or a difference of agreement, whether there’s something you can do about it that isn’t frightening or hopeless-making. 

Kendra: There’s that idea of emotional wifi again. Another key component of the Cowan’s studies has been that they focus closely on supporting father’s involvement. 

Philip Cowan: The services are focused on moms. What fathers… are chopped liver or what? So bringing a father in is really important, because no matter how involved in the day-to-day care of the child, fathers have tremendous impact on their kids.

Kendra: The couple also run weekly workshops for parents to find ways to improve their own relationships. Carolyn says they focus on small practical tips to reduce the points of friction in a partnership. 

Carolyn Cowan: Okay. So what, what do you think would help you when you’re on your way in the door and she’s already got the crying baby ready to hand you, and you haven’t even decompressed from your day. What would be helpful? They can come up with, well if I had five minutes, ten minutes, to just change my clothes or breathe, or something, small things could make a difference. 

Kendra: Phil says the workshops end in a special way. 

Philip Cowan: Each partner writes a letter of appreciation to their partner. And then they give the letters to their partners in the last session. And lots of tears. You know, none of us feels sufficiently appreciated for all of the things that we try to do. So to have a letter, a written letter of appreciation, is a really big deal.

Kendra: So if a letter of appreciation can be really helpful for a couple, we wanted to find out what could be really helpful for a whole family to work together. Christina Cipriano is the Director of Research at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. She uses a charter agreement with her classes. And she also uses one at home with her own family.

Christina Cipriano: So we created a charter together of how we want to feel at home and what we’re going to do and commit to each other to feel that way. So, you know, listening and respecting and so forth. And then we signed it. My kids drew on it. And we hung it up in our kitchen. And it continuously became a reference point of you know, making sure that we are living the charter. So if someone felt, you know, disrespected, if they felt like they were not being heard or listened to or included, that we would acknowledge that, you know, in the charter, we committed as a family to feel that way. Like what can we do? And how, you know, how do we address that need together?

Kendra: Erin says she and her husband managed just by having an awareness of each other’s needs in ways that may seem small, but that can make all the difference. 

Erin: We make sure that if we start realizing one of us has to tag out, that we tag them out. Like go take a minute to breathe. There are times in our home that get extremely stressful. And one of us can usually sense that. And it’s like, why don’t you go upstairs for an hour. Why don’t you go outside for 10 minutes? Like just to kind of regroup. I’m not saying that works a hundred percent of the time, but knowing that he and I have that support system for each other. It’s the only way we get through it.

Kendra: Merriam Saunders says it’s also important to be mindful about how you use the time you carve out with your partner.

Merriam Saunders: When you do find time to spend together, you have a tendency to talk about the kids, or the bills that need to get paid, or, you know, whatever, because this is your moment, your window. So intervention number one is, you know, really commit to time together. And don’t talk about the children, you know, talk about things you enjoy. Memories, anything else. Because there was a reason that you came together and had children with this person to begin with. And it’s very easy to lose sight of that. But not that hard to remember why you love this person to begin with, if you can spend time with them. 

Kendra: And for some people that means getting creative.

Merriam Saunders: I worked with one couple once where they couldn’t get time away because they couldn’t afford babysitters on a regular basis. So they woke up an hour early on Thursday mornings. They had this dedicated hour just for each other and they talked about their wishes and dreams for that day. And it was just a positive way to spend some time together and, and frame the day. So they started their day with positivity. 

Kendra: Tom and his wife, Amy provide a counterpoint to that couple-time message.

Tom: Spending time apart can be as important as spending time together. Right. Those two things compliment each other and we’re not afraid to, you know to be honest with each other, especially when one of us, you know, is off track and the other’s not. That’s important as well. 

Amy: I think the other thing that we’ve done is, and sometimes are better than others is, um, making sure we’re taking care of ourselves. Like often sleep is something that, certainly during times of crisis, you’re not getting a lot of, as sleep was one issue that our son had during moments of crisis. Just helping each other, like taking turns different nights. Exercise. Spending time with friends or people who brought us energy was another, I think yeah, piece that we’ve tried to maintain our sanity around this too.

Kendra: Amy and Tom have three kids and they’ve also found solutions for that sibling dynamic. 

Amy: We told our youngest daughter, we said, we think you should see somebody like a professional to talk about like, how our family life and Jackson’s impacted her. And, um, she was 100% resistant, screaming, yelling. And then I finally negotiated and said, you just have to go three times. And she’s like, I’m only doing it for you. And I said, that’s totally fine. And um, now she has a relationship with this person, so, which is useful for many other things. 

Kendra: Amy and Tom sought help outside of the family. Jackie says what helped her the most was talking openly with all of her kids.

Jackie: Especially with a mental health disability we, our whole family now, you know, It’s just common language in our house. We constantly are talking about, how, when you don’t feel good emotionally, what can happen. And talking with, with siblings, just about how to, how to see things a different way, even though we, we, you know, we saw someone who was irritable and angry and didn’t wanna be here. Um, helping that sibling, I think to understand that is probably one of the best things we did. I mean, I always felt like my kids knew too much about mental health, but in a way it’s it’s, I think it’s better in the end.

Kendra: Next time, on A Little Easier. They say it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a village to support the parents, but very few of us have that village anymore. We’ll explore how some parents have built their own. 

Eileen Devine: We need to be connecting with people who yes, see us and hear us and understand us, and also are committed to helping us get to a better place. 

Kendra: That’s next time on A Little Easier. We’ll end as always with a micro-action moment. Here’s one that might sound almost too simple, but it’s one that’s come up again and again in my conversations. Emily Holl reminds us that sometimes the most important ingredient for siblings or any kids can be your undivided attention.

Emily Holl: It’s so important. I think for parents to set aside special time with their typically developing children, which sounds like, who has enough time in the day? Right? I mean, if anyone listening to this feels that they have enough time in the day, please call me and tell me how that is possible. But the good news with siblings is that a little bit goes a long way. From my own experience, growing up, once a week on Fridays, we would get takeout for dinner. And my mom and I would pick it up. And it would be 15 minutes in the car together, just me and my mom. And we could talk about everything or nothing. We could just listen to music or talk about our day, talk about what was going on with my brother. And then 15 minutes on the car ride home. So that was 30 minutes that I had my mom’s undivided attention. It was the most magical 30 minutes of my week.

Kendra: I’m Kendra Wilde. And this has been A Little Easier. The show that was created to help you find more joy and resilience when parenting is extra challenging. Thank you so much for being here. Make sure you’re subscribed to A Little Easier in your podcast app so you don’t miss an episode. And while you’re there, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast, share it with family and friends. We’re an independent show focused on elevating parents because you’re the most important force behind your child’s wellbeing. Visit alittleeasier.org for show notes and discussion questions. Plus resources on parental burnout and resilience building. A Little Easier is written by Harriet Jones and co-produced by Harriet and Rae Kantrowitz. Sound design and original music by Rae. This podcast is brought to you by Wilde Peace for Parents and me, Kendra Wilde.