Someone says something, or stares a beat too long, and before you can open your mouth your neurotypical child has already stepped in front of their brother. Nine years old, chin up, explaining. Handling it.
And your heart does two things at once. You are so proud of them. And you are also grieving that they felt they should jump in on behalf of their sibling, protecting them like a parent.
When we talk about being mixed-needs families, we are talking about a lot of moving parts at once. We are navigating a neurotypical teenager who is seeking independence too soon and a neurodivergent child who is having trouble making friends, at the same time, along with all the dynamics that crop up between the siblings themselves. One of those dynamics is one of the hardest to keep tabs on: parentification.
This is one of the most tangled things in a mixed-needs family that doesn’t get talked about very often. We want our children to love each other. We want the neurotypical child to be an advocate, not a bystander. That instinct is good. But that is also how a child ends up with a job they were never meant to have — and how a piece of their childhood goes missing while we are looking the other way.
The word people use is parentification, and it is simply this: the difference between a child who helps and a child who cannot stop helping.
Helping is fine. Helping is family. The problem starts when the responsibility has no off switch — when your child scans every room for threats to their sibling before they have looked around for a friend of their own. When they cannot fully be a kid at the birthday party because they are on duty. When their standing in the family feels like it depends on how well they manage.
I’ve always been an advocate, especially as an educator, to let children be children. Let them enjoy their childhood. Don’t push them to grow up too fast or to lose their innocence and idealism too soon. Work with their development in education. And give them a world filled with imagination and wonder.
Then, I became a mixed-needs mama.
And my younger daughter, Annie, carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. She stepped into parentification constantly even though we tried to keep her from it.
We were living in Taiwan then, and Dave and I were stretched thin with ministry work. On the busy days, we trusted Annie to keep track of her siblings — to make sure everyone got home safely, to pick up lunch or dinner, to watch the clock. She was, in every practical sense, our babysitter.
Two of the siblings she was keeping track of were older than she was.
They were old enough that they didn’t need a sitter. It was the autism, not their age, that made me hand that responsibility to my younger daughter instead. I knew she would keep track of time and responsibilities and safety. And she did. Every time.
And frankly, sometimes it was a blessing. She actually took some of the pressure off of us at times when we couldn’t be there.
It absolutely was not fair to her. It was never our plan or intention. And, even today, I carry some guilt for letting it happen.
Helping her enjoy her childhood while still being a good sibling was a tightrope at times. It reminds me of two verses in Scripture that almost look like a contradiction:
“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2) … “For each will have to bear his own load.” (Galatians 6:5)
Three verses apart, and they appear to cancel each other out. But the two words are not the same word. The first is the crushing weight — the thing nobody should be under alone. The second is closer to a backpack: the ordinary load that belongs to you, that is yours to carry, that nobody can carry on your behalf. It is fulfilling our own calling and doing our part.
When we apply this understanding to our mixed-needs situation, our neurotypical child does carry more than some children, or at least different things than some kids. They may defend a sibling who’s been ridiculed. They may help educate their friends about the syndrome their sibling has. But they don’t need to step into parent mode and carry their sibling’s responsibilities or ours.
So how do you get one without the other?
We talk about helping our neurodivergent kids have the words and skills they need in social situations. This is one social situation where we need to give the words to our neurotypical child. “He’s my brother. He has autism. You can talk to him.” That’s it. They need a sentence, or a few sentences, ready for the situations they will encounter — words that protect them while still letting them help carry the burden our mixed-needs family sometimes faces.
What should they say when a child is rude? What should they say when an adult keeps speaking as though their sibling isn’t there? What should they say when they are embarrassed by something their sibling is doing?
That last one is the hardest, because embarrassment feels like a betrayal and most kids will never admit to it. So give them permission before they need it: “Sometimes he’s going to do something that makes you want to disappear. That’s normal, and it doesn’t mean you don’t love him.” Then hand them something to say — even just “I’m going to go find my mom” — and let them use it without having to explain themselves afterward.
What they should not have is a permanent assignment to monitor, interpret, and defend.
Give them an exit. “If someone is being awful and you don’t want to deal with it, you can walk away and come get me.”
Tell them that it is not their job. Not in a way that shames them for doing it, but in a way that lifts it off. “It is my job to protect your brother. When you help, that’s a gift, and I see it. But it is not on you.”
If you’re unsure how you’re doing in this, check whether they have any conversations with you that are not about their sibling. This may sting a little, but it is a quick test that reveals the truth of the situation. Count the last ten real talks you had with your neurotypical child. How many were about their brother or sister — an update, a request, a thank-you, or a debrief? If the honest answer is most of them, they have learned to parentify, and they learned it from us.
Ask them what they need, separately and regularly. Not “are you okay with all this,” which gets you the answer they think you want. Try: “What’s something that’s been hard lately that you haven’t told me?” Then wait longer than is comfortable.
Even with this help, honestly, they will probably still keep stepping up anyway. Some of that is love, and some is just not being comfortable with the painful situations our kids sometimes encounter. The goal has never been to stop them from defending their sibling. The goal is to help our child choose when to defend and intervene while knowing they don’t have to. We also need to help them learn not to boss around their sibling, or to help them too much with what they need to do themselves. They need to know this is not their job.
We may need to remind them often.
Because it usually isn’t someone else trying to take their childhood away from them.
They are handing it over themselves. They understand social situations and family dynamics better than we realize sometimes, and they want to make it better.
We must guard their childhood the best we can — and help them embrace it as well.
Annie is joining me on the podcast in a couple of weeks to talk about all of this from her side of it. I hope you’ll listen — she says things I didn’t know until I asked.
Next week she's on Sparking Everyday Discipleship too. We'll be talking about the importance of friendships and community in our children's lives.
And if you’re not on the mailing list yet, the starter bundle has resources for the whole family — including the 100+ picture books list for mixed-needs families, with titles chosen for the siblings too.