The Quality of Life of Siblings of a Child With Hearing Impairment

Abstract

Preserving a family, known as the base of society in the modern way of life is a great challenge. Preserving and maintaining a family where there is one hearing impaired child creates a large amount of pressure for parents, who must learn to balance between a child with a disability and a child with none. By noticing and diagnosing a child’s disability, parents are forced to face a whole new way of life. Raising a child with a developmental disability is a journey into the unknown, it is not uncommon for a marriage to fall into crisis, and family is constantly exposed to stress and numerous obligations. With the misunderstandment coming from the wider family about the problems they face and the social community that does not provide adequate support, they must learn how to raise both children. How equally they will treat them is crucial to the development of a harmonic sibling relationship. With an adequate approach and proper upbringing, a child with disabilities creates special bonds among members of the family that contribute to their faster maturation, greater maturity, responsibility and independence of siblings.

The aim of the study is to determine the sibling’s quality of life in a family with a hearing impaired child.

The results of previous researches (Mujkanovic et al., 2014) showed that siblings felt that family members ‘relationships were harmonious and never felt neglected, and a statistically significant difference in respondents’ responses was found in relation to gender, where girls expressed more positive attitudes in comparison to boys about relationships within the family. The results of researches on a sample of 50 adult siblings who have a brother or sister with hearing impairment show that the siblings developed a more tolerant and protective attitude in the relationships, that they were enriched by the experience of growing up with a hearing impaired family member, that they are still providing support and assistance when needed, but they also feel that they were jealous growing up and were slightly neglected by their parents. Analyzing the results, women had more positive attitudes than men, which were confirmed by previous research aswell, which can be attributed to the more emotional approach women tend to have with their brother or sister with hearing impairment.