Some youngsters who have a brother or sister with physical, cognitive or psychological disabilities have been known to feel ashamed to have their friends encounter them or jealous because their parents have to spend so much time, effort and money to help them. Having a child with a disability or a developmental delay is thus often a stressful experience for a family.  

Until now, there has been little research about the positive effects of growing up with a sibling with disabilities. A new study led by Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) developmental psychology expert Prof. Ariel Knafo-Noam and Dr. Anat Perry examines how growing up as a sibling of a child with disabilities may nurture empathy. This is one of the first studies to examine the possible positive effects of growing up with a sibling with a disability. 

It was just published in the journal Child Development under the title “Are there positive effects of having a sibling with special needs?

Empathy and prosociality of twins of children with non-typical development “

“Our findings indicate that siblings of children with disabilities may have greater cognitive empathy – an understanding of others’ thoughts and feelings – which is important. as cognitive empathy is key for social skills,” said Yonat Rum, a postdoctoral researcher at both HUJI and the University of Cambridge. 

The family is typically the central social environment of a human being in the first years of life, they wrote. “An evolutionary perspective suggests that the basic need to care for offspring explains why humans developed empathy, and sibling interactions provide a unique context for children’s developing care for others. Older siblings are socializing agents for younger siblings’ empathic and prosocial tendencies, and younger siblings also influence their older siblings’ empathy development.” 

In the past, researchers have suggested that without proper support, growing up with a disabled sibling might negatively affect well-being However, they thought that “parent-like” caring for their siblings might also enhance empathy. Greater empathy was found among healthy siblings of children with Down Syndrome when the children engaged in more caregiving of their siblings, according to at least one study. 

Empathy and prosociality were relevant not only within the family, as there is evidence that siblings of children with developmental problems were more empathic and prosocial not only toward their own siblings but also towards others. Taunt and Hastings

The HUJI researchers examined data from the Longitudinal Israeli Study of Twins which included 1,657 families of twins born in 2004 and 2005.  Of these, 63 families were identified where one of the twins has a disability and the other developing normally. 

The normally developing twin siblings of children with disabilities were then compared to 404 typically developing twin siblings from the rest of the sample, on measures of cognitive and emotional empathy and pro-sociality, completed when all children were 11 years old. Participating children were given a self-report questionnaire to assess their cognitive and emotional empathy and a computerized task designed to assess prosocial behavior.  The participating children’s parents also completed a questionnaire to assess their children’s pro-social behaviors. 

The data showed that typically developing children who had a twin with disabilities scored higher in self-reported cognitive empathy than did typically developing children who did not have a special-needs twin.  Contrary to predictions, no differences were found in emotional empathy and pro-sociality. 

“These positive effects might be due to the specific ‘advantage’ of cognitive empathy to better understand their sibling with disabilities and to support the sibling relationship,” explained Knafo-Noam.  The authors acknowledged the preliminary nature of the findings and called for further research in this neglected field.