The Weight They Carry
They’re the ones you see in waiting rooms, doing homework or scrolling their phones while appointments stretch on. They’re the ones who know all the medical terminology by heart but never asked to be the backup plan. They’re the ones who learned early that their struggles are manageable, so they manage them quietly. Siblings carry a heavy load and often they carry it alone.
If you’re a parent of a child with a disability, you’ve likely poured enormous energy into their needs. The appointments, therapies, navigating systems, and advocating fiercely. This is necessary and important work. But somewhere in the exhaustion, you may have noticed your other child becoming smaller in a different way—not physically, but in presence. Easier. Almost convenient in their adaptability. And if you’re a sibling reading this, you know exactly what that feels like. To be proud of your brother or sister, to love them genuinely, and to simultaneously feel like you’re living in a reality where it’s up to you to figure it out. You are there to help other people, but no one is there to help you.
The Invisible Architecture of a Sibling’s World
Being a sibling of a child with a disability means living inside a contradictory emotional landscape. On one side: deep love, respect for your sibling’s resilience, and sometimes even admiration for their strength. On the other side: resentment that your family looks different, grief over the sibling relationship you imagined, worry that somehow becomes your responsibility too early, and a particular kind of isolation that comes from feeling like nobody else gets it.
This isn’t a contradiction. This is complex. And it’s completely, universally human and very common strengths and challenges that siblings of people with disabilities face.
For some siblings, the adaptation shows up as becoming “the easy one.” You learn not to ask for much, or read the room so you don’t become a problem. You know when your parents are at capacity, so you don’t mention that field trip permission slip or the friend drama or the anxiety keeping you awake at night. This hypervigilance to others’ emotional states isn’t maturity. It’s a young person managing an emotional load they didn’t choose to carry.
For others, it looks like a fierce independence forged much earlier than it should be. You learn that relying on anyone is risky. You become self-sufficient not out of choice but out of necessity. In a society where there are no systems built to support families with disabilities, the family system is the one that gets stretched, and siblings learn that asking for help means asking for something that might not be available. This independence can look like strength on the outside. Inside, it can feel like loneliness, resentment, or even abandonment.
The Mental Health Landscape
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and it’s important for us to look at the emotional weight siblings carry. It often shows up as anxiety, grief, caregiver burnout (yes, even in children), and a specific kind of ambiguous loss, grieving the sibling relationship you expected while still deeply loving the one you have.
There’s the constant low-level worry about your sibling’s future, your family’s stability, or what your role might become. There’s the identity question: Who am I, separate from this family situation? Am I defined by my sibling’s disability, or can I be just myself?
Many siblings also experience what might feel like depression. A flatness or fatigue that doesn’t make sense because “everyone else has it harder.” But your feelings don’t get smaller just because someone else’s challenge is bigger. You’re allowed to be tired. You’re allowed to grieve. You’re allowed to feel resentment—and to feel guilty about that resentment at the same time. Parents, this is what to watch for- not to fix, but to see and name: your other child becoming too quiet, withdrawing, seeming older than they should be, taking on emotional or practical care-giving responsibilities, or appearing never to need anything from you. These aren’t signs of a problem child. They’re just signs that your child might need someone to talk to, someone to check on them, or may need some additional resources themselves.
What Siblings Need (And What Parents Can Do)
Siblings need to know that their feelings, all of them, are valid and normal. Not weird, not shameful, not something to overcome quietly. They need time and attention that isn’t tied to management or caregiving. They need to know they matter, not because of what they do or how easy they are, but just because they exist in your family.
Practically, this might look like carving out regular one-on-one time with your other children that’s just for connection, nothing really fancy. Creating space to talk about hard feelings without trying to fix them. Being honest about what’s happening in your family rather than pretending everything is fine. Recognizing that your child doesn’t have to earn your attention by being low-maintenance. And critically, getting support for yourself so you have more emotional capacity to notice them.
One resource our Sibling Project recommends teaching your child about feelings is our free Sibling Journal, which was a collaborative initiative from the Utah Parent Center created with local small business LEFA Collective.
The Sibling Project: A Space That’s Theirs
Parents often can’t do it alone, and they shouldn’t have to. Especially when it comes to providing peer connection with other sibs. Your other child needs to meet other siblings who get it without explanation. They need to be in a space where their sibling’s disability doesn’t define the conversation, but it’s understood in the room. They need witnesses to their experience.
This is where the Utah Parent Center’s Sibling Project comes in. The Sibling Project is built on a foundational belief: siblings are important, worthy, and deserving of a community designed specifically for them.
In the Sibling Project, your child, or you, if you’re a sibling yourself, will find peers who understand without lengthy explanation. They’ll connect with other brothers and sisters navigating the same mix of love, worry, and identity questions. They’ll be in a space designed around their needs, not as an add-on to disability services. They’ll discover they’re not alone, and they’re not broken for having complicated feelings.
The Sibling Project exists because the Utah Parent Center recognizes what research confirms: siblings are often the forgotten family members, even though they’re carrying real emotional weight and deserve real support.
An Invitation
If you’re a parent, consider this your permission to see your other child(ren) clearly. Not as the easy one, but as the resilient one, and as someone who might benefit from connection beyond your family. The project hosts Sibshops every month for sibs 8-16 years old. We invite you to check it out as a free resource.
We are also launching a new sibling space for children 8 years old and older on Discord. We are so excited to be sharing more about this soon. Become a founding member!
If you’re a sibling, you belong somewhere that understands the specific weight you carry. We’ve created an Adult Sibling Facebook Page and invite you to join and connect with other adult sibs who “get it.”
The Utah Parent Center’s Sibling Project is staffed by adult siblings and can connect with your family as peers, in ways you might not be able to. The sibling relationship is valuable. Sib feelings matter, and no one in your family is meant to carry this alone.
Looking To The Future: Conversations That Can’t Wait
Here’s something parents of adult siblings don’t always hear: the weight doesn’t lift when your children grow up. In some ways, it compounds. Adult siblings may take on legal, financial, or caregiving roles as parents age. They may have spent decades quietly setting aside their own needs and dreams, not out of resentment but out of a kind of unspoken obligation they never agreed to out loud. And when no one ever named that weight, they carry it alone, especially into adulthood. Unanswered questions create anxiety and even resentment.
If your other child is grown now, it’s not too late to open that door. In fact, it may be one of the most important things you do for your family’s long-term health. That means being willing to ask: How has this been for you? Not just our family, but you, specifically?
It means being ready to hear something that might be hard and setting your ego aside to really listen. It means acknowledging that your child, now an adult, may have been holding feelings for years that never had a safe place to land.
Hard conversations aren’t easy. But the families who have them are more connected, more honest, and more capable of planning together, practically and emotionally, for the future.
When siblings feel seen and heard now, they’re better equipped to show up for everyone in the family later. When parents open their eyes to what their adult children have carried quietly, it creates space for a new kind of relationship, one built on honesty instead of careful silence.
A tool that can be an icebreaker for this conversation along with our Sibling Journal is our Siblings Becoming Caregivers workbook.
The conversation your family needs might feel uncomfortable. Have it anyway. Your other child’s mental health, and your whole family’s, depends on someone being willing to go first.
Connect with the Sibling Project through the Utah Parent Center. Visit https://utahparentcenter.org/resources/the-sibling-project/ to learn more about how to get involved.
