Vécu de la fratrie d'enfants présentant un trouble autistique
(2006)
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- Authors
- Supervisors
- Hayez, Jean-Yves
- Abstract
- This study highlights different sibling's relationship modes and the necessity to take into account brother's and sister's needs in the therapeutic process of autistic children. The psychic life experiences of autistic children's siblings have been analysed based on drawings of their families, Story-Stem Completion Tasks and semi-structured interviews with the siblings (26 subjects) and their parents. These data have been compared with two control groups: children without somatic or psychic disabilities (26 subjects) and siblings of children with heart disease (10 subjects). Siblings of an autistic child develop a particular functioning mode, namely facing changes of the family dynamic. Living with an autistic brother or sister has positive consequences for some children (10 subjects), such as enriched maturity, more caring about kindness, a will to please and to integrate the child in family activities. These consequences correspond thus to resiliency mechanisms. For some siblings (4 subjects), an intermediate adaptation was observed with occasional elements of parentification, a feeling of being abandoned combined with positive elements such as pleasure sharing. From the remainders (12 subjects), such of them showed a very conforming attitude, behaving like small adults, with extreme parentification attitudes or presenting an excessive self-resignation attitude, inhibiting all negative feelings to the autistic brother/sister and others showed exacerbated confrontation. All these situations can be considered as preoccupied. Some variables have been found more frequently in worrying situations: families with two children, siblings who are younger than the autistic child the eldest sisters acting as parents and the lack of knowledge about the autistic disorder.
- Affiliations
Citations
Wintgens, A. (2006). Vécu de la fratrie d’enfants présentant un trouble autistique. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/112111