Sibling Estrangement

Sibling estrangement is the breakdown of relationships between siblings. This breakdown can lead all the way from partial (low contact) to complete (no contact) alienation. There are a number of factors that contribute to sibling estrangement or alienation including the following (not an exhaustive list):

  • Highly dysfunctional family units where children are raised in environments of chaos, neglect, rejection, and or lack of protection
  • “Every person coping for themselves” situations of intense competition that breed jealousy and envy
  • Parental favoritism
  • Feelings of anger, frustration, and rage that children are afraid to express to parents that are then acted out on siblings
  • Family roles and expectations – children can be “set up” by their parents for life long conflict

Photo by Direct Media on StockSnap

Here is a great video that explains sibling issues that lead to estrangement in dysfunctional family systems. The “Lions Den – that crazy cacophony of dysfunction” between siblings is the direct result of toxic parenting. The bottom line: Whether you are the sibling who estranges or is estranged, unresolved trauma catches up with each one eventually.

Parentification

Parentification is a type of emotional abuse or neglect that occurs when a child has to take on the role of a parent to siblings or even parents. This often occurs when substance abuse is present. The results of parentification can be long lasting. Children who lose their childhoods in this way learn to care for others at the expense of their own needs and feelings. As adults, parentified children often struggle with setting boundaries and can have difficulty with relationships, anxiety, and poor self esteem.

Examples of Parentification:

  • Taking care of siblings because a parent is unable to do so
  • Assuming household duties such as cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping (beyond chores or what would be expected at that age)
  • Being a caretaker for a parent with a disability, mental health, or substance use disorder
  • Financially supporting the family
  • Witnessing a parent hurt themselves or others
  • Forced to keep parent secrets
  • Listening to parents talk about their problems, serving as a confidante, or giving emotional support
  • Listening to one parent complain or vent about the other parent

A critical step to overcoming parentification is learning to set appropriate boundaries – creating clear guidelines and limits about what is acceptable, and honoring one’s own needs. However setting boundaries can upset the dynamics within the family, especially between siblings. Unfortunately, there is little research on parentification’s effects on sibling relationships. The article below notes that in some cases siblings maintain close, complex bonds into adulthood and continue to fulfill the needs of others at the expense of their own, while others distance themselves altogether to escape the role.

Choosing to estrange yourself from those who loved you first is a painful choice, akin to living in a door between two worlds. On the one side, you no longer belong to a shared past with others who know your history and on the the other, you resign yourself to a future with no extended family milestones to celebrate, or familial ties as you age. It is a high price to pay for peace and mental stability.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/when-kids-have-to-act-like-parents-it-affects-them-for-life

PCEs Build Resilience and Combat ACEs

While Adverse Childhood Experiences can cause toxic levels of trauma and lead to negative health implications in adulthood, researchers have discovered that Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) can mitigate their effects.

What are these PCEs that can build resilience and add years to someone’s life?

  • Being able to talk with family about your feelings
  • Feeling supported by friends
  • Having at least two non-parent adults who take an interest in you
  • Feeling a sense of belonging in school
  • Participating in community traditions
  • Feeling like your family stood by you in difficult times

Teachers were a huge part of building resilience in my life. As I begin my 28th year in education and my 6th year as an Intervention Specialist, I am ever aware of the power a classroom teacher has in the lives of their students. The teachers in my building found these notes in their mailboxes today, in little burlap bags with mini watering cans and a pack of seeds, to remind them of the immense possibilities they hold in the life of a child. A special thank you to my friend Heather Leighton who knows how precious those wildflowers can be.

May All Your Weeds Be Wildflowers

That’s my wish for you this year, in this garden of a classroom where you are planting seeds. Your garden will have marigolds; identify them early on. These are the students who have “I love my teacher” written all over their faces on the very first day of class and still, on those dark days when you might have forgotten what made you select this profession to begin with. Seek out the marigolds when you need them and even when you don’t think you do. 

Your garden will have tulips. You will water and fertilize them with every intervention you can imagine – with no movement, not a single green leaf or digraph mastered or inference from the text. And suddenly, come spring, they will bloom! Every ounce of energy you have put into them will come back tenfold, and you will feel like you have made a difference, at least with this one.

And then there is the weed – you know the one. They are making your life miserable with their behavior, apathy, or intolerable home life – any of the many “things” you can’t seem to fix, no matter how hard you try. Secretly, you are so sure that nothing you do will ever make a difference with that one because nobody could. You just never know – that one might be a wildflower. The wildflowers come back when you are in the 10th, 15th, or 20th year of your career or sometimes when you are busy planning lessons or wrapping up the year, and that email, letter, or visit stops you in your tracks because you never realized that one thing you said or did made the difference between a life lost and a life saved- because that is the power of one teacher in a classroom. That is the power you have to make a difference.

I hope that all your weeds are wildflowers. Let me know if I can help. It’s going to be a great year!

Amy Miller – Intervention Specialist

ACEs Cause Childhood Trauma

ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences, are traumatic events that happen between the ages of 0-17 identified in a research study by the Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente in the late 1990s. These kinds of traumatic events include things like neglect and abuse, living with a parent who has a substance use disorder or mental illness, witnessing domestic violence, and a number of other issues that cause instability in a child’s life.

ACEs create toxic stress that interferes with a child’s brain development during a critical time period when they should be learning and growing. An ACEs score tallies the different types of traumatic events and has implications for life beyond childhood. You can take the quiz at this LINK to determine your ACEs score.

But what do these scores mean?

  • 67% of adults in the US report having at least 1 ACE.
  • 12.6 % of adults in the US report having 4 or more ACEs.
  • The higher your ACEs Score, the greater the likelihood of poor health and behavior outcomes as an adult.
  • Someone who has an ACEs score of 6 is 24 times more likely to commit suicide than a person with a score of 0.
  • 5 of the top 10 leading causes of death are associated with an ACEs score of 4 or higher (respiratory and heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and suicide).
  • An adult who experienced 6 or more ACEs as a child will live an average of 20 years less than their peers.

Listen to Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris describe the long term affects of ACEs in this TED Talk:

The Captain & Me

Summers in the great Pacific Northwest are for fishing (Captain Crusty), shrimping (Captain Crusty), and crabbing (okay – both of us!).

While the good Captain is on the Witchy Woman, this education-turned-writer type is writing, revising, and trying to secure a literary agent for my memoir, Writing My Way Home. It’s the story of a woman who must return to a past she would rather forget to save her present – think Hillbilly Elegy meets The Glass Castle with a little Where the Crawdads Sing thrown in for good measure.

Big thanks to my writing buddies Susan and Robin! Robin has a terrific blog over at Substack. You can check it out at this LINK!