Growing Up Together, Differently
If you spend any time exploring the sibling experience in families where one child has additional needs, you’ll find a familiar pattern.
The focus tends to rest, heavily, on the cost.
And let’s be clear: that cost can be real. It can take the form of missed time, reduced parental bandwidth, fewer spontaneous moments, and a front-row seat to the hard stuff.
There are times when family logistics are weighted unevenly. There are phases when one child requires more input or guidance, and the other must grow comfortable with less spotlight.
But that is not the whole story.
This is a story about my daughter, whom I call ‘Matilda’.
Matilda is the twin of my son Max, who is autistic. She is not his shadow, not a bystander, and certainly not a supporting character. She is her own person, dazzlingly so. But her upbringing has been undeniably shaped by walking alongside a sibling whose requirements are both different and greater, at least in visible terms.
And while the path has its potholes, it is also lined with many gifts.
Matilda’s childhood has been filled with visual schedules, emotional regulation strategies, communication tools, sensory profiles, and highly adapted routines. Though created with her brother in mind, she soaked them up like sunlight.
Naturally, I am biased, but her storytelling is otherworldly. Her empathy, seemingly limitless. Her understanding of brains and behaviours rivals that of many adults.
She is growing up in a house where difference is neither hidden nor feared. It is named. Celebrated. Normalised.
Our family conversations stretch across neurodiversity, inclusion, and strength in individuality. These aren’t lessons from a textbook or topics for a special school project; they’re just woven into the fabric of our home. For Matilda, neurodivergence is the backdrop against which she is building her view of the world.
And it has made her world bigger.
She sees nuance others miss; she notices who’s left out. She knows that brains work differently and that communication can take many forms.
She’s seen me inch my way through Max’s communication barriers – trialling tools, adjusting approaches, and refusing to settle for “close enough”. Along the way, she’s learnt to use her own voice, confidently naming her needs and speaking up when something doesn’t sit right.
From a very young age, she’s been fluent in feelings. Not just her own, but everyone else’s too. Her compassion has been forged in the crucible of our daily rhythms – of shared struggles, small victories, and constant adaptation.
She knows how to find kindness and humour in chaos. How to hold her own opinion while still showing curiosity and respect to those who see things in an alternative light. How to decode frustration and spot joy in unlikely places.
She’s learning how to let go of burdens that are not hers to bear.
She’s never seen Max as less or even as especially different. He’s simply her brother. She knows that he might not always get the joke (at least not right away), but that he’ll always make her laugh. She calls him a great role model – not because she’s been told to, but because she senses how much learning comes her way by virtue of him being in her world.
His challenges may be more apparent, more layered, more explicitly scaffolded, but she’s never imagined him as “other.” She has witnessed first-hand what adaptation and persistence can achieve. She’s seen the victories that come from effort, and the opportunities and freedom that come from support.
And she’s contributed to both.
For all the ways I’ve tried to guide and protect Matilda, she has also been one of Max’s most important teachers. When he was learning to speak, she modelled language. When he was learning to play, she led the games. When he didn’t understand the rules of engagement, she intuitively made new ones. She held his hand and shared a constant flow of encouragement.
The influence began early, but it hasn’t been one-way.
I used to worry about the imbalance. A lot. I kept a mental ledger, trying to ensure no one got less. Over time, I realised the maths doesn’t work that way. Our family isn't a zero-sum game. Giving to one does not automatically take from the other. In fact, some of the inputs intended for Max – the extra energy, the supports, the patience, the presence – have nourished Matilda in ways I could never have planned for.
They are twins, born together but growing in starkly different directions, with their own strengths and sensitivities. Parenting them equally has never meant parenting them identically.
It has meant tuning in. Adapting. Knowing that while Max might need me to pre-empt his sensory load in a supermarket, Matilda might need me to fully engage in a conversation about the social dynamics of her classroom. Where he is best supported by a translator, she is looking for a mirror. Where he benefits from a co-regulator, she calls for a collaborator.
Both are important needs that deserve to be met. But they’re met in different ways.
There are, of course, many moments of tension. I feel them, and I know she does too. There are times when Matilda sees the additional scaffolding around her brother and wonders, consciously or not, where hers is. It’s a fair and understandable question, and one I take seriously.
But even here, I see a maturity emerging in her that belies her age. She is beginning to comprehend that having “more” support carries a toll of its own – that it’s not always a privilege, but sometimes a necessity born from struggle. That help is not hierarchy. That fairness can look like a thousand different things.
I have no doubt she will keep asking important questions about equity, identity, care, and everything else too. And I welcome those questions, even when they’re hard. Even when it feels beyond me to produce a reasonable answer, or when I have no answer at all.
Because I trust what’s being built underneath.
Matilda is being raised with a deep understanding of human complexity. Of invisible labour. Of adaptability rather than absolutes. Of the fact that the loudest person in the room is rarely the one with the most to say. She is learning about how to love people as they are, not as we wish they were.
Remarkably, she already grasps the difference between a narrative and the truth.
These are lessons that can’t be taught in a single conversation. They are absorbed through experience – through proximity, observation, and ongoing reflection. And they are some of the most enduring lessons a person can carry.
And every time I see her internalise a new lesson, I re-learn it myself too.
So yes, there is a cost to being the sibling of a child with additional needs. But there are also profound gains. For Matilda, I believe those gains will last a lifetime.
She is growing up not in spite of this path, but because of it.
And I’m developing alongside her, forever grateful for the way she helps me see our version of the world more clearly.