A Sister Copes With Her Brother’s Autism

The article “A Sister Copes With Her Brother’s Autism,” was found on the New York Times website, under the following link: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/a-sister-copes-with-her-brothers-autism/?em. The article is about how a child that suffers from special needs affects the other members of their family. This article is based on a report found on the National Public Radio, titled: Coping With an Autistic Brother: A Teenager’s Take. This article focuses on a specific family, a fifteen year old named Marissa Skillings, “whose eleven year old brother Andrew, has Asperger’s syndrome which is a form of autism.”

She discusses the challenges of living with a brother suffering with autism such as: it taking a toll on her relationship with her parents, she gets a lack of attention, and avoids time at home. “I come home and deal with it when I have to, and when I don’t have to deal with it, I make sure I don’t,” she said. However, with all of the hardships that her brother’s autism causes, she also discusses how much she cares about him. “She and her brother tell the story of the time a neighborhood boy picked on Andrew. She chased the bully down the street, cornered the boy and slapped him.” This makes me think about how siblings take care of each other.

I know that if my older brother suffered from autism or even if he didn’t suffer from a disability, that I would be very protective and am protective of him. Older siblings will fight for their younger ones in most cases; they feel that they have a responsibility as a sibling to deal with. Everyone knows how mean kids can be, and I know as a sister, I wouldn’t want my sibling to deal with that and if I found out about it, I would make sure that it ended. I would do everything in my power to stop the harassment that my sibling was suffering from, because it’s not right. In the book, “Megan Meade's Guide to the McGowan Boys,” by Kate Brian, there are seven brothers, and of the seven brothers one of them suffers from the same type of autism as the young boy in the article. In the book, it discusses how the family is affected by it, and how the young boy deals with it himself.

In the article it states, “He talks nonstop; talking and talking and talking. He’ll tell anybody information about any animal whether they want to hear it or not. People can tell Andrew has a disability…. When he gets nervous he moves his hands back and forth.” And like in the book, the brother talks nonstop and the information that he focuses on now is about the New York Yankees. He knows all there is to know about them, and just talks about fact, scores, and the history of the great and historic baseball team. Living with a sibling that suffers from autism must be difficult. What would you do in the situation? Do you think that you could handle what it takes? How far would you go to protect a sibling?