A Glass Sibling-Hiding in Plain Sight

In today's episode, Shari Collins joins us  talking about being a Glass Sibling.

Glass Children are the siblings of someone with a disability, whether mental or physical. They often go unnoticed in the chaos since they appear to be fine in comparison to the obvious need.  This is especially prevalent in families who have a child with severe mental illnesses, since most time, energy, and effort seems to go toward managing that and not to the 'normal' siblings. Glass Siblings hide in plain sight and struggle through life unseen. Silenced by circumstances and learned behaviors based on the reactions of others, Glass Siblings struggle to find the help they need.

We talk about what the signs are of a glass sibling.
How parents can help if this is already occurring.
How parents can prevent this from happening.

Shari has an online community to support glass siblings.  You can find her at https://www.glasssibling.com

She also has tips for parents to help glass siblings feel seen. You can find those at https://www.glasssibling.com/freebie

Are you someone who loves someone on the spectrum? You can find 5 key strategi

Are you someone who loves someone on the spectrum? You can find 5 key strategies for parents of kids on the autism spectrum at https://www.championsofautism.com/5-strategies

We would love to have you as a member of The Champions of Autism Community. This is a community for anyone who loves someone on the spectrum. Our stories are different, yet familiar.
https://www.championsofautism.com/community

Transcript

good afternoon, Shari. , our guest today is Shari Collins.  , , we're happy to have you on the podcast today and, , we'd like you to tell us a little bit about yourself.

Absolutely. Stacy and Joe, thank you so much for having me. It's my honor to be here. Awesome. So I am what they call an Air Force brat. My dad was active duty, so we moved around more than most people I know. Not as often as other military members that I know. , I was actually homeschooled because of a lot of that, and I'm a bit of a nerd.

So I pushed and I graduated early and I just. I enjoy being an overachieving nerd. I study psychology for fun. It's one of the things that I enjoy doing, which is why I'm so glad we're able to connect and talk about this kind of thing today. Yes. Awesome. So where are you from? You, you were in an Air Force brat,  mm-hmm.

So you moved home, but where, where do you call home? , right now I call Colorado Home. My mom is from here and so when my dad retired, she said, Almost a here they bought their forever home in Colorado.  Fantastic. , so you like to study psychology and stuff. Is that what you do for a career?

No, not yet. At least. , right now I work full-time as an office admin while I get a few other ducks in a row. Study psychology. Build those toolboxes. Yeah. Fantastic. So, , Shari, you have an interesting perspective when it comes to the world of special needs. That's what we have in common. We have a, , mm-hmm.

Our 16 year old son has autism. , so we are in the world of special needs from an autism perspective. But you, like I said, have an interesting perspective. , Shari, you represent, I think, one of the most overlooked populations within the special needs community. , But I think it's a lot more common than people realize, even just in you and I talking to each other and getting to know each other a little bit.

So can you tell us a little bit about what this population is and, and who we're talking about? Absolutely. So the population that is near and dear to my heart, because I am one of them, is the siblings of somebody with a special need. Mm-hmm. There's a lot of support out there for the child who has a special need be that, , severe mental illness or a physical disability.

And granted, sometimes it's hard to access that support, but it is out there. There's some support out there for the parents trying to help those kids. But I have looked and looked and I have not been able to find hardly anything. For the siblings who are living in the home, being raised with it daily, impacted by it, and there's still no support for them in the middle of it.

Yeah. Yeah. So you are in the process of developing that support, , through, is it a, an online community? Absolutely it is. , the technical term that I finally discovered about two and a half years ago is glass child. Mm-hmm. That's the psychologically, clinically accepted term for your sibling has special needs, and people look right through you because you're normal by comparison, you're fined by comparison.

Mm-hmm. So people think you don't have any problems and look right through you like glass. Right. So I called my community glass sibling because of the glass child thing, and then also because. We're siblings, so Yeah. Yeah, we're getting that online community together because that's the best place to go.

We can connect over the internet without being in the same place and share each other's burdens and get that peer support that we've been missing. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, with Glass Siblings,, would you mind sharing as, as much of your story that you're comfortable with,  of how you kind of, I guess, became a glass sibling?

Absolutely. So my story,, we actually, my family adopted, , when I was five years old, the adoption was finalized and twin boys, , from Western Africa joined our family. And at first we thought a lot of it was just culture shock. I mean, obviously they came from a whole nother continent. There were gonna be cultural differences.

There are gonna be behavioral norms that are different. But as a year or two went by, we started to realize this is excessively violent. This is not going away. This, this has to be more than culture shock. And so my parents started looking around and trying to get that help and eventually it, it took a lot of fighting to get them the help that they needed.

But eventually we learned that they had both been severely mistreated before they joined our family, which is unfortunate, and some of that caused some literal rewiring in their brain. They both had reactive attachment disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, A D H D. They both had psychopathic tendencies, sociopathic tendencies.

At one point, they were diagnosed as being without a conscience. Wow. And so there was just a lot of upheaval in our home because of those severe mental illnesses and the behaviors that come from that. Mm-hmm. And it was a lot of upheaval, and some of it was just how do you keep your family safe from your family?

And so my poor parents had to figure out how to keep their kids safe from their kids. So a lot of their time, energy, and effort went to. Containing the twins and saying, okay, how do we make sure you can't hurt anybody else? And so my dad would go to work, he would come home, he would deal with the, whatever had happened with the twins that day.

He would go support my mom and myself. And then my two biological siblings were just kinda, Hey, I love you. Good night for a season. And my mom. Struggled a lot under the weight of all that, and I saw that, and so I'm not entirely sure when I learned this, nobody explicitly said it to me, but some at some point I decided I cannot add to her burden.

I cannot tell her that I have any problems. I cannot tell her that I need help because she is running at capacity. I mean, I'm hearing her say, I can't take this. I don't know how to do this. And I, I don't wanna add to that. I don't wanna make my mom hurt more. I don't wanna make my dad hurt more. So I pretended that I was fine and I lied to myself and everybody around me really, really well.

And I, because I looked fine. People thought I was and I wasn't. Shari, how old were you when this all came about? I was probably about seven or eight when I realized that my mom might not have the capacity to help me and my dad between work and the twins might not always be able to be there for me when I need him.

, I distinctly remember at least once where I crawled onto his lap and asked him if he still loved me because I wasn't sure anymore. And. Thankfully he does. And after a lot of counseling, we're all, we've worked through a lot of that. But that shocked him and he started making some dramatic changes to say, oh, wait a minute.

If she's asking the question, if she's really not sure, I've gotta change something because I do love her and I need to figure out how to show that. And so he did. Mm-hmm. And we were able to start working through that, for which I thank the Lord, because not every last sibling has parents who make those adjustments.

But, then my dad got deployed to Iraq and then it kind of went downhill for a little bit again because it was just my mom trying to figure out how to navigate getting my special needs siblings, the help that they needed while taking care of her three other kids while trying to figure out how to be a married single parent.

Yeah, and, and that put a lot on you though, as a seven year old, eight year old, even into your teens. . You know, being a transparent child, so to so to speak, so. Mm-hmm. , were,  there anything that you were doing to cope, ? What, what did that look like?

, what it looked like was, I've always loved to read, so sometimes I would just escape into books and people would say, oh, she's just reading in the corner, she's fine. And I was like, I'm reading because I don't know how to handle my life. Yeah, and I didn't know how to articulate that. I was about 10 by the time my dad deployed that time, and so a lot of that I coped by helping with my younger siblings, helping my mom out wherever I could.

I coped by telling myself it wasn't that bad. I coped by looking around and saying, all right, well here's what I can do. I can. Pull up in my room, I can tell people I'm fine and pretend that I believe it until it's true. I can just buck up and take it because I don't see another option. And I, I really coped honestly, by dissociating and shoving a lot of it down because I didn't know how to articulate it.

And at that point I was so good at hiding it. Nobody knew to ask me if I was okay or not. Yeah. Yeah. , So did you have anywhere that you could like turn to help anybody that you could talk to about things? Not really. I mean, I could talk to my parents when they had the time and the capacity and they were always willing to listen, which I appreciate.

But back to the whole, I didn't feel like I could add to their burden.. I chose not to take advantage of that, which is the part that's on me. , but I would try, I would reach out to other adults in safe places that I knew, like church and. The response that I got was disheartening. People would tell me, don't they need the help?

Aren't you glad your family can help them? , I distinctly remember at least one Sunday school teacher looking at me and telling me to quit, making up stories to get attention. Hmm. And so I just pretty quickly learned that I can't trust other people to be help when I need it, right? Because I wasn't looking in the right place and I didn't know where to look.

Mm-hmm. And the people that I was looking to for help didn't know how to help me. Yeah. Now I might be, , speculating a little bit here, but I'm, I'm guessing that with the twins and so much energy had to go into kind of controlling them and handling them and everything, like it probably kind of limited you having friends over or you being able to go to like family activities and stuff like that.

, was that the case? It absolutely was for sure. , which is another reason why I read so much because. I didn't, at that point, I didn't have a driver's license. And my mom, we would make plans and then something would come up with the twins and we wouldn't be able to do it. Mm-hmm. , I think I had one friend in elementary school and middle school and we were able to stay friends because I could go to her house after church Sunday afternoons and then her parents would drive me back to my house.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that's how we were able to maintain that. Yeah. , my younger siblings, I'm an introvert, so I was okay staying at home a lot of the time. My younger siblings, they're total extroverts, so they would find friends who could give them rides and get outta the house as much as they could wherever possible.

But even that was pretty limited. Cuz if a family emergency came up, you know, you gotta circle the wagon then. Mm-hmm. Band together and come home. Yeah. So, yeah. . Now, even as,, you say, you're an introvert, You're still, you know, finding a way to give back and create a community and, , and help others.

You know, like you're, you're, you're going outside of your own comfort zone to be available and be of service to others. I think it's amazing. Mm-hmm. One of the things that I really learned in counseling is that, Introversion is no excuse for isolation. Mm-hmm. And I used it that way for a very long time.

But me an introvert just means I need some time alone after I hang out with people to recharge. Mm-hmm. It doesn't mean I don't need people at all. And I had to learn that and learn how to walk that out and find the community that I needed. Yeah, I love that. . Being an introvert is no reason for isolation.

I love that. And I think even for people who aren't introverts but have friends that are introverts, we shouldn't asse that either, that, oh, they probably just wanna be a left alone. , we wanna invite them or we won't include them cuz they probably just don't want to. We need to extend that invitation and stuff.

So, Speaking on behalf of the introverts who have gone through things, I would say, yes, please, because I didn't know how to ask for it, and people thought I was okay without it, and then it became a vicious cycle. Right, right. I feel like I need to call all my friends now and be like, Hey, let's do something, but with plenty of notice so they have time to mentally prepare.

Right? Yeah. Not time to make excuses of why they can't do it, but just mentally prepare to do it. Right. Pretty much. Pretty much. Right, right. I'm kind of in that in between, I think it, what's it called? An ambivert where Yeah, I like to do things, but it needs to be kind of more my idea and on my timeline  cuz I'll go out, have a great time.

But if somebody rings my doorbell, I'm like, everybody be quiet. Oh, she's a wife. We don't wanna answer the door unexpectedly. Yeah. So,   obviously ,, the, the way that you grew up, , being a glass sibling, it has had an impact on you. , do you think it's also impacted like , or influenced your personal beliefs or your values or anything?

I do, , one of the things that it taught me is if I'm this good at hiding what I'm going through, other people are probably pretty good at hiding what they're going through too. And so it really gave me that value to don't just believe what people say, look at them and truly show that you are here. You are able to listen.

Mm-hmm. Because there's power when you can look somebody in the eye and say, I lived that too. Mm-hmm. I get it. No, or even if you didn't live that specific situation, you can still look at 'em and say, you know, I deal with that symptom. It's for a totally different reason, but I deal with that symptom too.

Here's what helped me. How can I help you and, and connect? Mm-hmm. Yeah. It really gave me that value that that impetu to serve because I didn't get it, and I know how much it would've helped me, so why would I not give it to somebody else? Why would I not help them when I could? Right. Absolutely. Now, Shari,  our listeners,  have , some form of relationship with somebody on the spectr, ?

Mm-hmm. Let's talk about parents real quick.  We, a lot of our listeners are parents of special needs kids, and,  let's talk about from your point of view, what should. Parents look for, what are some signs that we could look for from our kids who are not on the spectrs, our kids who that are typical, but we might be, , looking through them so to speak, , and seeing through them because of our own situation with our own kids who are gathering the majority of our attention.

You know, what are some signs we could look for and what could we do as parents to get ahead of this? A lot of the signs are honestly behavioral. , if your kid is always telling you, I'm fine, there's no way somebody's always fine. Sometimes we're fine, sometimes we're not. So if every time they say, Hey, how are you doing?

How's your day? And you hear, oh, I'm fine. It was okay. That's probably a sign that they don't feel comfortable sharing. That might be because they don't think you have the capacity. That might be because something's going on and it's private and it's a teenage years thing that they don't wanna tell their parents.

Mm-hmm. There, there, there's layers of variables here, but if, if you're struggling to handle helping your special needs child, so is their sibling. If you, as the adults, as the parents can't do it well or can't do it at all, or just are struggling to do it, So's your si so's the siblings, so's your other kids.

They just may not have the tools to articulate that. Mm-hmm. , so some of it is just saying, Hey, what, what was hard about today? How can I make it easier for you? Yeah. , another one is making sure you have that one-on-one time with every kid, not just the special needs kid. Because honestly, that was when I finally started really connecting with my parents again, was when they made that time to say, you know what?

Life is crazy. Mm-hmm. And your sibling with these special needs does need all this help, but we're gonna block off this hour and come hell or high water, we're gonna keep it and we're gonna spend this time with you. I love, and that, that really meant a lot to me. Yeah. So that's the one huge thing that I would recommend.

Yeah. That, that's great advice. Mm-hmm. Great advice. , we have a son that's on the spectr and we also have other, other children as well. And,, looking through the lens of a parent, , I can, I can see how,  the years can go by quickly with your other kids and, and you miss out on some things because you were so focused in other areas and, and it would be, Also, I can see how a parent would try to make up for that lost time down the road.

Have, have you and your parents made, , some connections,  , Now that you're in adulthood, have you, have you been able to reconcile and make some connections? Absolutely. We did, and counseling is something I cannot recommend enough. It really did help our family a lot. It gave me the tools to verbalize, wait a minute, I do have feelings.

I do have some needs. I can share them. It gave my parents the tools to recognize, okay, maybe you messed up, but that's okay. You're still able to talk. You're still able to work on this. It gave me the ability to, it gave me a safe space to say, mom, dad, I feel this way because of this. And it gave them a safe space to say, well, this is what we were trying to convey.

This is what we meant. And then, , we eventually did stop counseling and we still use those tools and continue to have conversations, and I'm very glad to say that we're really close now. , it was several years of intentionally fighting for family and fighting to keep that relationship. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

But it was worth it. Yeah. Now what about your, , relationship with your other siblings? Because you have two other biological siblings, correct? Yes, I do. And we are honestly closer than most siblings than I know. I mean, we've, we've been through Helen back together. We, we talk a lot. We have a group chat with just us kids where we still text back and forth sometimes, and.

There were several years where I was closer to my siblings than I was to my parents, and I would, they would turn to me, I would turn to them and we would hash it out among ourselves and our parents didn't always even know something was going on, which is not the healthiest either. Hmm. , we did eventually learn how to have those conversations with our parents and bring the whole family in on it.

And that was, that was part of the counseling and the fighting for healing and all of that. That worked and really helped. Yeah, and I had to get over this habit of apologizing every time I brought them a problem because, oh yeah, I, even if I didn't actually say the words, I'm so sorry. I have this thing that I don't know how to deal with.

That was the attitude that I had because I thought that I was a burden and a problem and I didn't wanna add to that. And so that's another sign your parents can be on the lookout for is if your kid always seems slightly apologetic when they ask you for something like they don't know if they should.

Yes. That's another good sign that they maybe need some reassurance that you do wanna meet their needs. Yeah. And in the normal course of parenting, I have also learned to recognize that not everything I asked for was a need that should be met, but that's a whole separate parenting conversation. Right?

Yeah.

Now, Shari, if, , if any of our listeners right now are, are a parent who is mm-hmm. Now questioning whether. Their children feel the way that you felt. What would you say would be the best way to lead into a conversation to get to, to getting to know if that's true or not? Like how should a parent start a conversation or have a conversation with their child to see if they're feeling this way?

Honestly, I would not start with a conversation because if your kid is feeling that way, if, if your kid is having that child syndrome and feeling seen through and overlooked, They have trained themselves to automatically respond with, I'm fine, or, oh yeah, it's no big deal. Or, oh, I don't mind. So  having that conversation without changing anything else, you're just gonna get those responses that they've taught themselves to pretend that it's okay.

Mm-hmm. So first I would recommend you really delve into that, spending that one-on-one time, building that relationship, creating that safe space. Because, and I can only speak for myself here, but I spent years teaching myself not to tell my parents things because I didn't wanna add to their burden. I spent years pretending I was okay and it one conversation wasn't gonna be enough for me to unlearn all that and start opening up and sharing.

Yeah. And so it, it's gonna be a hard couple, couple, little bit of however long it takes of the parents creating that safe space until the child. Trust and feels comfortable enough to open up in that. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I know that's not what parents want to hear, but I also know that it's what it took for me and it's what it took for every other glass child that I've talked to.

Yeah. Yeah. There's no quick fix just in things like this. It take took time to develop. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. But a couple things that really helped when my parents started to develop that, , was, was that one-on-one time, was taking the time to listen, was saying, wait a minute. I had a rough day today. Maybe my kid did too.

Let me sit down and, Hey, are you, are you sure you're okay? Figuring out the love languages, learning how to talk to each other, that, that all really helps. That's good. I love , the love languages cause, , You know, I think it's applied all the time to relationships. Mm-hmm. But can identify, hey, my kid's got needs too.

What's their love language? , I love that. , so, getting ready to wrap up here. Is there anything else, any other sort of message that you would wanna convey? , I mean, we've talked a lot about the parents and what they can look for in their kids, but anything that you'd like to convey to somebody who might be listening who's like, oh my gosh, that's me.

That was like my childhood. What would you wanna convey to someone who may also be a glass sibling? , well, to all the glass siblings out there, I would say you're not the only one. You, you tend to think that you are for a very long time because you get so good at hiding your problems that other people don't see them.

So then they don't come up in conversations and then you don't realize. But you're not the only one, and there is support, and there is community, and there is a way to heal. You can have those conversations with your parents. You can grow, you can help other people along the way as well. Mm-hmm. That's awesome.

That's awesome. That's Sha You've been fantastic today. You know, and we really enjoyed having you on our podcast with us.  That's all the time we have today. ,  it was great talking with you and thank you for sharing,  everything that you went through, , as a child and more importantly, the.

Thank you for sharing what you're doing for others right now. And,  people want to come and visit you and, and learn a little bit more about how to navigate through the,  glass child syndrome. Where would they come? Is it website you have? I do, I do have a website. It is glass sibling.com.

And if you want a couple tips on how to help a glass child feel seen, whether that child is you and you're looking for ways to talk to your parents, or whether you're a parent looking for a few tips to help your kid, , glass sibling.com/freebie, and there's five of them right there for you. I love it.

Fantastic. Yeah, we're gonna put all this information in the show notes and everything so people will be able to find you. , so thank you so much for joining us on our episode. Absolutely. Champions of Autism, , we just wanna make sure that we're bringing valuable information on all the levels.

, not only for the, the kids, but for the parents, but for the siblings as well. So I'm so glad that we have gotten to meet each other and that we can speak to this to hopefully avoid this from continuing to happen in families where special needs are are going on. 

Okay. So we're gonna go ahead and get ready to sign up.. It was my honor to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Yes, thank you so much. All right, I'll talk to you soon. Meeting to you soon. Good, Joe. Bye Stacy. Bye, honey. Bye.