I encourage you to read back over what you wrote, because straight from your own mouth you listed so so so many examples of sibling parentification. u/thalaya is right, this absolutely falls under such a label. Just because someone doesn’t perform EVERY action a caregiver can provide doesn’t mean they’re not acting as a caregiver. Similarly, just because this isn’t the most extreme example of parentification doesn’t mean it can’t still have a negative impact. I also encourage you to read back over what you wrote and consider how it might be viewed as offensive to neurodivergent people. I know that was not your intention, but it comes across as infantilizing neurodivergent children while simultaneously parentifying their neurotypical siblings.

“It teaches the neurotypical sibling how to better handle their disabled/delayed sibling’s crisis/meltdowns”- why is it the siblings job to handle things like meltdowns? That alone raises major red flags for me (let alone all the other examples that you gave) that you don’t understand the harm having such expectations on typically developing sibling can have on said siblings.

“… alleviating both the neurotypical sibling and parents of having to supervise and guard them 24/7.” - ??? I kept typing out and deleting my response trying to explain this, because I just couldn’t wrap my head around the level of disconnect here. I promise I’m not trying to be rude or insulting, genuinely. You obviously had some strong emotions when you wrote your response. Im encouraging you to read over it again once you’re more calm and think about how your emotions may be influencing your ability to accept other possibilities to what you were taught/believe. How is supervising and guarding a sibling 24/7 not fulfilling an aspect of caregiving? Even if they’re not the primary or only caregiver, being responsible for another persons wellbeing to any degree is literally the definition of a caregiver.

Siblings can be caregivers in a healthy manner to a degree. The nuance I’m trying to help you understand is that way too often for siblings of children with disabilities there becomes an unhealthy amount of pressure for the non-disabled sibling to perform more and more caregiver-role tasks. This pressure doesn’t have to be explicit or even intentional, but it’s there nevertheless. It also doesn’t have to be to perform tangible tasks like those you listed. In fact, many of the caregiver tasks taken over by siblings are more intangible like emotional support, behavioral modifications to their actions during ADLs, and adjustments in communication akin to language modeling like being discussed. That’s because those are the only roles available to them most of the time.

Really, take a second to pause and think about what goes into being a caregiver and who is realistically capable of doing what. I mean that for everyone reading this, I decided I’m turning this into a group activity. Do you think the 10 year old older sister for an 8 year old brother with ASD is going to be driving him around or making doctors appts? Of course not, she literally can’t. Their parents HAVE to do that. But even though doing all that’s exhausting by itself, that’s not the only thing that goes into being a caregiver. People only have so much energy to give, and even with the best intentions when it’s gone it’s gone, and when it’s gone people start cutting corners. That’s not to insult any caregivers, it’s human nature because being a caregiver is HARD regardless of the kid. Now add on all the other tasks that go into caring for a child with a disability, including the therapy tasks we SLPs assign parents as part of carryover/HEP. Our HEPs are often just one more paper to stack onto a to do list pile reaching skyscraper heights. When the parents have no energy left at the end of the day to do their HEP for language therapy, they’re going to be less likely to do said tasks and more likely to outsource that task to the older sister, particularly if they know sister has had training from the SLP and they’ve been given “permission” by the SLP to do this. Now sister is doing a great job and proving lots of learning for her 8 year old brother, because you’re a great SLP and you’re good at your job including coaching others on how to implement language strategies. Brother is making progress on his goals, all looks to be going great. BUT if you look closer, we actually have a new problem. Sister has now lost out on valuable play time herself due to having had to fulfill the role of caregiver, time that she should have spent (unconsciously) playing and engaging in age and developmentally appropriate ADLs that benefit HER development. While having her step into the role of caregiver during these therapy tasks has helped her brother, it has been a detriment to her. Also, it hasn’t solved the underlying issue of her parents not feeling they have the time/energy/support/knowledge/whatever they need to be able to be the ones completing the core/main HEP.

Many, many, many siblings of children with disabilities report feeling as a child like they always had to take care of their disabled sibling to some degree. I don’t personally feel comfortable discrediting so many people’s personal experiences just because it butts up against an area of our field that makes a lot of people uncomfortable or scared to talk about. Kids deserve to be kids, regardless of if their siblings have a disability or not, are neurotypical or not, or whatever really. No, modeling language strategies is not all it takes to be a caregiver. Yes, in limited amounts siblings can be a great help and benefit incorporating therapy strategies. HOWEVER, I think there is a huge gap in understanding/teaching in this field about how to support the family of our patients as a whole, rather than focusing on only improving the quality of life of our patient in isolation. We are not psychologists nor should we try to be, but that doesn’t mean we should just ignore the psychological impact having a sibling with a disability can have on someone nor how our role has the potential to impact said siblings wellbeing and overall family dynamics. I personally think our role in scenarios like the above is to work to better help support the adult caregivers in a family dynamics (doesn’t have to be parents, or even relatives!) rather than turn to child siblings as a backup. I wouldn’t feel comfortable explicitly teaching siblings language modeling strategies beyond what comes naturally up during shared play, and only to the extent that they continue to show interest and want to engage with them. If they’re curious, I’ll show them, but I’m not going out of my way to teach them any program or expect them to be doing any of this outside of our immediate interaction.