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Finding Identity Beyond Sisterhood
This is a great piece by columnist Michael Casten: https://smanewstoday.com/2018/11/28/sma-siblings-identities-beyond-family-role/?amp.
I know that when I was growing up, it was easy for my siblings to be labeled as “Kevin’s brother and sister.” I inevitably got a lot of attention on account of having SMA, and I felt for them as they were living their own lives. It’s hard for a lot of siblings who have a brother or sister with SMA. Michael does a fantastic job in his columns writing about his family as a whole, and looking at how SMA impacts each of his kids. I highly recommend reading this one.
What do you all think? For those of you who have siblings, could your siblings relate to Ava?
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3 Replies
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With my older non-SMA sister, there was a big enough age gap where we didn’t overlap in school too much. Maybe a couple years in grade school, but we must have been on opposite ends because I don’t recall seeing her much at all. I can tell you without a doubt she wasn’t doing her presentation on SMA. She never mentioned being known as DeAnn’s sister either. In fact I think I was more known as Laurie’s sister in the wheelchair. I do think she thought I did get extra attention and felt I rarely got into trouble. But the trouble thing was more that I was a goody two shoes. She understands now why I got some extra attention I think.
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I know what you mean about the goodie two-shoes thing. I used to be called the “golden child” and I hated it lol. I still acted out as a teenager, but for us it’s harder to be rebellious as kids when we’re fully dependent on our parents. But yeah, I’m just glad that Michael wrote about the whole attention dynamic. It’s an important topic for SMA families to discuss.
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I’m about seven years older than my sister, and 11 years older than my brother. Not only was there no school overlap, but my siblings haven’t even attended the same schools as me, other than one year where my sister went to my middle school. Therefore, I don’t think they’ve dealt much with being “labeled as Ryan’s brother and sister.” I know that during that one year, however, my sister got a good amount of “Oh, you must be Ryan’s sister!” I’m not sure if she disliked that, and some identity crisis factored into her changing schools, nor do I want to know. Lol
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