Sibling relationships as a resource for psychological safety of the family in the crisis of raising a child with special psychophysical needs

Context and relevance. Given the increasing number of children with special psycho-physical needs, ensuring family psychological safety through mobilization of internal resources becomes a priority. The sibling subsystem is considered a significant adaptive resource within the framework of crisis psychology. Objective: to analyze sibling relationships as a mechanism for ensuring family psychological safety in crisis conditions associated with raising a child with SPN. Hypothesis. The explicit attitude of a typically developing child towards a sibling with SPN is interconnected with the emotional climate of the marital subsystem and performs a regulatory function in maintaining family homeostasis and psychological safety. Methods and materials. The study involved 123 participants from 51 families (51 mothers and 72 typically developing children aged 6—12 years). Methods included: Color Relations Test, Sentence Completion Method, Family System Test (FAST), Parent-Child Interaction Questionnaire, and semi-structured interview. Results. A statistically significant difference was revealed between implicit and explicit attitudes of a typically developing child towards a sibling with special psycho-physical needs. The implicit attitude is primarily associated with the child's own attitude towards the family, whereas the explicit attitude, unlike the implicit one, correlates with parameters of the marital subsystem reflecting overall family well-being, suggesting its regulatory function that extends beyond the sibling subsystem. The dynamics of anxiety transmission from the marital subsystem to the sibling subsystem were described; five levels of relationship distortion were identified (disappointment, compensation, separation, disengagement, hostility). Conclusions. The explicit attitude of the typically developing child contributes to maintaining family homeostasis through the redistribution of emotional tension. It is recommended to use these findings in psychological counseling to strengthen the sibling subsystem as an adaptation resource.

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