“High five!” she calls, as she extends her little hand towards me expectantly.  “High five!” I respond, clapping my hand with hers. 

It’s my 18month-old’s latest game.  In a room full of adults she’s in heaven.  She can go around the circle high-fiving each one, then go around again for good measure.  She’s hard to resist – a cute face with an infectious smile.  Who could turn her down?

Sometimes when her 13-year-old brother comes home from school, she rushes up to him too.  “High five!” she greets him.  He is startled, confused, unsure.  He doesn’t understand what she is wanting from him, and cautiously tries to manouvre around her.  “High five!” she says again, this time a little less certainly.  Why isn’t he responding like everyone else does?  I decide to intervene.  Taking her brother’s hand, I bring it towards his sister’s and say “High five” for him.  She seems to accept this slightly different version of the game, and tries it again.  Satisfied, she toddles off to other things.

I wonder when she will notice that her older brother (J2) is different from other children; that he can’t talk, doesn’t respond in quite the same way, isn’t able to play with her?  J2 operates at a 6-9 month level intellectually, so at 18 months old his younger sister (J3) has already well passed him.  And I think she has already started to realise something isn’t quite right.

I feel a bit sorry for both of them.  Even though J3 has been around for 18 months now, J2 still struggles to accept her.  When she comes near he’ll either walk away, or get agitated and growl her.  She’s in his “space”.  It’s not the sort of relationship or reaction we had expected from a normally happy, accepting boy, and it took us both by surprise. 

Before J3 was born I had looked forward to the close, loving relationship that I had been sure would be shared by my children.  J2 loved having other children around, enjoyed watching them play and interacting with them.  “You are going to have a little sister to play with soon,” I would promise him, “isn’t that exciting?”  Of course he didn’t understand what I was saying, so couldn’t begin to grasp how his world might be turned up-side-down in the months ahead.  No longer would he be the only child (now that his older sister had died), no longer would he be getting all of the attention, no longer would he be “lord of his domain”.

I am hopeful that in the months and years ahead there will be more acceptance, more tolerance.  I am hopeful that rejection after rejection from her older brother won’t result in J3 giving up on him.  At the moment I think she is a little more wary of him than a few months ago, but still obviously loves him.  Her first word (other than “Dad-dad”) was her brother’s name.  And she still calls his name out happily every time he comes home from school.  I hope that doesn’t change.

Occasionally I see glimpses of a smile, then a giggle, when he is watching his little sister play.  “Good boy,” I encourage him, “it’s your little sister isn’t it? ”  And I give him a hug for making an effort.  It gives me hope.