When a younger sibling overtakes an older SN sibling

[Awaken]

I'm sure many of you must experience this.  What do you do when an older sibling is delayed, and a younger sibling "catches up" developmentally, or even overtakes the older child?  how do you give the older child pride in his or her place as the oldest and keep their self esteem high when they see they are falling behind a younger sibling?

My 6 yo just started kindergarten and is picking everything up so quickly.  He is learning many sight words and sounding out lots of new words every day.  We all read together at night, and I've always had my older child read aloud for part of the story, and all of a sudden the younger one is reading, and it's obvious that it is making my older DS feel bad that his younger brother is "smarter than him".  :(   Even as we're driving, the younger one is spotting road signs and reading them while the older one has to spend a lot of time sounding everything out. 

It's so obvious when we're doing homework- the 6 yo just zips through it happily and is done, while the older one struggles and often can't figure out the most simple reading and math even with concentrated 1:1 help and praise and encouragement.  I think it is only going to become more obvious the older they get, as the 6 yo thrives in the school environment and soaks it all up eagerly, and the older one struggles with the basics.  They are nearly equivalent academically, even though they are 3 years apart. 

How can I encourage my younger one in his learning while not making the older one feel bad about himself?  I don't want to have to hide my younger one's abilities because he should be able to be proud of his accomplishments as well, and not be put down because we don't want to hurt his brother's feelings.  yet I can see how this would breed a lot of sibling resentment so see a younger sibling advancing so much.

What have you done in this situation?

[Linda on the move]

We have this situation in my house. My kids are just 19 months apart, and the older one has special needs. We emphasize that all people have strengths and weaknesses, that different things come more easily to some people than others, and then we find moments to celebrate. Dh and I point out the various things that one of us is better than the other one.

My older Dd, who is on the autism spectrum and has a social anxiety disorder and several other labels, is a hell of a swimmer. Seriously. Kid can knock out a 200 IM like no body's business. 

I believe that every child is good at something, and that part of our job is to figure out what it is and nurture it. Yes, it is more obvious with some kids that others. Yes, some skills, like reading, are extremely valued in our culture.

We do celebrate our younger DD's academic accomplishments, (she is gifted in the traditional sense of the word) but we keep it kind of low key. Being smart at school stuff is great, but it isn't the only thing. Character counts more, the kind of people our children are growing into.

It has been tough at times, but I think it's worked out positively for both my kids. My younger DD  thrives with school tasks but she knows it isn't the most important thing in the world. She doesn't have the intellectually snobbishness that plagues so many of her peers. She is quite able to thrive and excel without thinking it means that she is more valuable that someone who is struggling at the same task, or assuming that she would be better at everything -- partly because we celebrate the things in which her sister excels, like distance swimming.

At times it has been tough for my older DD, at moments when she has realized it. That has been muted for her by the very nature of her "specialness."  She isn't tied enough into what is going on with other people to get too hung up on it for long. I can see how it could be a bigger issue for a sn child who isn't on the spectrum. Hopefully other mothers with other experiences will chime in!

[Zan&Zav]

I have the opposite problem. My older son is fine and the youngest have autism. The son with autism is brilliant and accedemically surpasses my older son as well as myself. That gets tricky

[~cassie]

I try to remind them that everyone has strengths and weakness.  My oldest son is 6.5 "only" has ADHD but he struggles with school work at times.  He does great at school but it takes a lot more work for him.  But he is very athletic and can ride his bike and climb trees very well!  My SN 4 yr old has an awesome memory.  He memorized the ABCs and numbers and shapes at 2 with just seeing them once and that was with a 1 yr+ language delay.  His academics are about 1 yr ahead of where my oldest was at the age.  And my youngest, who is only 1 yr younger than my SN son, excels at everything.  He has already passed his 4 yr old brother up in verbal ability, physical ability, but doesn't have the awesome memory.  So they are all unique in their own way and I make sure to show them how we are all different, including myself and his dad and the rest of our family.

[FarmerBeth]

I have three children, the oldest and youngest have special needs.  My middle child (and only daughter) is 19 months younger than my oldest son, who is on the autistic spectrum.  In the early days, it seemed like she was way ahead at everything, school, sports (even swimming, which he always excelled at), making friends.  There were things we always knew our oldest excelled in, like observation and making scientific connections, but in the early grades it was hard to have instances where this was valued.  We tried to point out things we valued, like taking good care of the animals or telling us such interesting ideas.  He didn't so much notice his sister was ahead as that he was making mistakes, and we had a hard time with OCD (in his case a separate entity beyond ASD obsessiveness) regarding making mistakes.  He was occasionally jealous that his sister didn't seem to make mistakes as often.

All we could really do was to continue to value our children as they are.  We also made sure he got the honour of being the first.  He still got the first bike (even though his sister ended up learning to ride it before him), went out one on one with his uncle to the first movie, fried the first eggs, etc.

Fast forward to now, and in DS's case, the disparity is not so great.  He's caught up in many skills.  He's not as coordinated as my daughter, but they are equally good swimmers at this point and he is by far the better diver.  He's really good at running, too.  Now that he's middle school age, his science skills have a chance to shine in the science fairs.  His initial late math skills have now surpassed his peers, my daughter included (except when it comes to speed calculations, but his concepts are very advanced).  Sometimes she is the one jealous, now.  He even has his own baking business, and is branching out into gourmet ice cream.

I guess it depends a lot upon the nature of your children's special needs, but I think often special needs children do have special talents and just need some time to find them.

[LynnS6]

My special needs  child 'just' has SPD, but I think he also has some visual-spatial deficits, and so he's not great at some visual spatial stuff that our dd excels at. She's also surpassed him in reading, though that's not quite as obvious, because they're both fluent readers.

One thing that happened naturally for us was to separate the bedtimes for the kids. We, too, read aloud before bedtime and we separated the bedtimes because their interests in books were diverging. But it also helped when dd steamed through the Harry Potter series this summer, and ds stalled on the 5th book.  Ds, because he's older, gets the later bedtime (by about 15 minutes). That's a privilege that he likes. Could you do the same for your kids?

[beachcomber]

I have tried with my kids to never be comparative in how I look at them or interact with them. I celebrate each of their achievements and take pride in who they are, not what they can or can't do. It's hard to see my DS overtake my DD sometimes. He's NT and she has Asperger's. While she's very verbal and has a wonderfully creative mind, she has motor delays. He's already surpassed her in some areas. She also lacks that drive that most NT kids have - that ability to pick one's self up and try again - so it can be hard to keep her motivated to learn new skills. It's really hard for her to learn some things. I've learned the value of providing her with as many opportunities for error-free learning as possible. Even with video games, which help her with coordination, etc., the model has to be error-free.

[melissa17s]

I can relate as dd started reading at 4-5 when she would over hear us working on how to read with ds who was in early elem.  She is still ahead in reading, but he has learned many of his strengths especially ones his sis does not have or has not developed.  We try not to compare, and when ds expressed exasperation over dd reading, we pointed out to him that he helped her learn.  Although he can get competitive, he does not really stress too much about it.  He was also bummed when dd got on to the student council and he was picked as an alternate, but I reminded him that it was for the better because it conflicts with his orchestra practice.  He is good at the cello and so we encourage him to pursue it.  DD, who is very bright, is actually more concerned about her abilities than ds about his own.  She will stress, so we try not to make a big deal out of school. We tell both kids to try and see how it goes.  Oddly enough, they are 2.5 years apart in age, but because of ds being behind and dd being ahead, they get along together really well and appreciate many of the same things; we read together a lot.  I guess we are lucky.  

[chaimom]

This has been an issue in our house, only it's between twin boys.  One of them is highly gifted, his brother is gifted and dyslexic.  My hg boy read his first book at 3 1/2.  My dyslexic boy (we didn't know it at the time), entered kindergarten telling his teacher he was afraid he would never learn to read. And at that time he couldn't even write his name.  He wasn't diagnosed until the beginning of 2nd grade, at which point he still couldn't read, while his brother was at 5th grade level by then.  

We've done a lot of things.  First of all, we always praise or comment on the effort, rather than the outcome.  We don't have them read together, to avoid having themselves make a comparison.  They don't help each other with homework. We comment on/praise   each boy's unique talents and abilities in front of the other boy-- for instance, my dyslexic son is a natural-born comedian and artist, while my other son is a computer and building whiz.  We all know it and even the boys appreciate it about each other. And we've also encouraged them to develop their own interests that help define who they are outside of school.   That really boosted my dyslexic son's self-esteem and he loves that his sports friends have no idea he has a twin.

I'd say 1st and 2nd grades were probably the hardest for self-esteem, but it's gotten dramatically better as my dyslexic son has found best friends at school and is comfortable with where he is.  We reward him for working hard in school, and it does help motivate him when he knows he struggles more to get the same outcome as his brother.    I think at this point, I worry about it more than he does.