The Sibling Syndrome

By Leeanne Seaver, H&V Headquarters ©2019

As a middle child myself, I feel your pain, Dakota. In fact, before I was a mom, I was on record with wanting only two children so I could spare another human being the indignities of birth order that only the middle child experiences. And there they were, my two boys, Dane and Dakota, brothers four years apart. The oldest couldn’t hear at all, the youngest was hearing but not listening (not true, but this is how I how I describe my family to any new H&V crowd—gets a laugh every time).

Then when Dane was ten and Kody (his nickname) were six years old, Makena came along—the unexpected but joyfully welcomed baby sister. If I still had any middle child anxieties, I must have dismissed them in light of the years between my kids. I’d read somewhere that widely spaced children were generally imbued with a firstborn personality. Voila! We’d solved the problem by chance!! Except we hadn’t.

According to Julia Rohrer, a personality psychologist and research fellow with Germany’s Max Planck Institute, “The first-born gets the privilege of [the parents’] undivided attention until the second child is born. The last-born gets the privilege of undivided attention when the older children have already grown up [and left the house].” (Prevention Magazine, May 2018) This leaves one kid stuck in the middle, following in the footsteps, being compared, wearing the hand-me-downs, scowling at the older sibling’s freedom and privileges while resenting the baby of the family who gets indulged and adored.

Believe me, Middle Child Syndrome is a real thing (I hope my siblings read that part). But if there’s a Middle Child Syndrome, then I think there could also be a version of it that happens when a family has children who are both hearing and deaf. Mind you, it’s not a hearing/deaf thing, it’s what happens when communication needs and challenges affect and influence how deaf and hearing siblings relate to each other. And that surely includes how their parents navigate all of that. Let’s call it “Sibling Syndrome” and acknowledge that it can complicate the family dynamics a bit.

There’s not a plethora of research on this topic relative to hearing sibs, but there is some that you’ll find on the H&V website under “S” in Communication Considerations https://handsandvoices.org/comcon/articles/pdfs/siblings.pdf. More helpful resources are here: https://www.raisingandeducatingdeafchildren.org/2017/10/16/siblings-of-children-with-hearing-loss/ I’ve been particularly fascinated by Tattersoll’s “Simultaneous Views of Reality” that were exemplified by a hearing 30-year-old male sibling who, when asked if communication was a major problem, responded, “Oh, we found ways round it, there was no, er . . . if we wanted to get anything to each other, we could do it.” But later in the same interview, the brother said, “You couldn’t have any sort of conversation, that would be very difficult. It probably tended to be more superficial.” Of such contradictions, the researchers concluded, “Respondents, therefore, do not need to be judged as dishonest; they are merely presenting their version of events, an account of the way in which they have made sense of the experience of growing up with a deaf sibling.” (Tattersall, Young, 2003, “Exploring the Impact on Hearing Children of Having a Deaf Sibling” Deafness & Education International, Whurr Publishers)

I suspect Dakota could relate to that. However much Dane torqued him (or vice versa), Kody has admitted, “I feel kind of upset that Dane has to go through such difficult measures just to be able to talk to people. Sometimes I get mad if I think that people assume he is mentally challenged or something.” It’s a painful subject for Kody, one he doesn’t like to get into even now.

Growing up in a hearing family that was working as hard as we knew how to make sure Dane didn’t get left out had unintentional consequences for Kody. He was often thrust into the role of interpreter or “elucidator” in situations where he just wanted to be the second baseman. One time he came home from school all excited that his sixth-grade gym teacher was teaching everybody the finger alphabet in ASL. Thrilled, I asked, “Did you tell him you already knew it?!” Dakota flatly responded “No,” the enthusiasm drained from his voice. And then he changed the subject.

Looking back, I see more clearly. Like all children—regardless of birth order or hearing status—my hearing son just wanted and needed to be seen in his own context. Kody wanted to be good at sign because he was smart and capable, not because his brother was deaf. Then and now, he has a right to the spotlight just for being bravely, thoughtfully, awesomely, and exclusively himself.  ~

H&V Communicator – Spring 2019