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He’s eating so much of that stuff today. Throw it away.
Andrea’s twin brother Sebastian is autistic, which the family did not learn until he was 3.
It feels strange to be responsible for your brother when he’s the same age as yourself.
Spit it out. Yuck.
Oh dear, horse droppings. Yuck, it looks more like a dog’s ***.
Children with siblings with a handicap are an overlooked group.
In this programme we follow the children in 3 families.
Sometimes he has fits where he can’t breathe, and I am scared he will die.
It’s tough to live with that fear, and it happens again and again.
She’ll say, ”Why was I born like this and not like you?”
That upsets me and I feel sorry for her. But I love her very much this way.
When Magnus comes home from kindergarten, Nadine and I are there to meet him.
In Århus we meet Jesper and Charlotte, the parents of Nadine, 14, Mathias, 11, and Magnus, who’s 5.
Are you going to have a bath, Magnus?
When we heard about our new kid brother, we didn’t know about his handicap. It was a shock to see him.
When he was a baby, dad looked after him at night to check if he was breathing.
But it was hard for my dad to go to work in the mornings. Then we had someone who looked after him at night.
Are you hungry or thirsty? Would you like something to eat? Yoghurt? You’d like that?
Sometimes it’s a bit annoying to have to be there for him all the time and feed him.
But it’s also nice, otherwise I wouldn’t do it.
There are periods when he’s very ill and has fits where he can’t breathe.
Suddenly, while he’s playing, he turns blue in the face.
Magnus. Close it. Ohh.
He was in hospital for six months because he had pneumonia.
Let’s call mummy. Mummy!
It was a bit of a bore having to go visit him all the time, and we couldn’t be at home like a real family.
Like that.
We are going to pick up Sebastian, my twin brother, who’s autistic.
He lives in a place with many other kids with handicaps.
If I don’t see him once a week, I miss him a lot. I see him both with my mum and my dad.
Would you like a kiss?
Andrea, 11, lives with her mother Anita and her stepfather Carsten.
Her twin brother Sebastian has come home for a visit.
When I haven’t seen him for a while, I feel happy inside when we are going to see him.
The difference between us means that he does funny things like eating a lot of salt from the table.
Until we were 3 or 4, he wasn’t handicapped, but he stopped becoming better at things, and he began to stammer.
They examined him and found out that he has autism. I was upset because we used to play together,
and I thought maybe he didn’t like me any more, but it was his handicap.
Andrea's mother is going to have a baby in two months
I look forward to having a little brother that some day I will be able to play games with.
It will be wonderful to have a normal brother where you don’t have to be responsible for him
looking in trashcans or eating horse droppings.
Come in
No, I don’t want my picture taken.
My sister has a handicap. It’s a little hard for her. She gets cross when you enter her room.
She sometimes shouts at you.
Jens, Jens, I want to after all.
Kirstine’s my older sister, and still I often take responsibility for her, and so does Jens.
She needs help with some things, and we manage that as an everyday thing.
Hans and Lene have three children, Jens, 8, Helene, 14, and their older sister, Kirstine, 15.
She has Down’s syndrome, something you are born with. Children with Down’s look a lot like each other.
She goes to this special school in the city, and when we pass it, she always waves.
She’s not really like someone who’s 15. She’s a little behind in her development.
Don’t. We are going ..
Sometimes she’ll hit you, and she’s very strong. One day she hit me, and I fell against the wall. It was really scary.
It will soon be the Sunday of Helene’s first communion.
Jens and Kirstine are going to make a collage of family photos as a present.
Okay, Magnus, pet it, I’ll find the food.
I love Magnus more than anything, perhaps also because others reject him because he’s different.
So perhaps I care more for him because he’s different and he won’t have many friends.
Put this in the basket. It’s empty and has to go in the trashcan. Then you go to the kitchen and throw it out.
When I have friends here, I let him come in.
Go and light the fish light so we can feed them.
He’s a little different because I allow him to do most things here
Like this, Nadine. Have you done it now?
Sometimes it’s hard to set limits. I say stop, he starts crying, and then I let him do it anyway.
He knows exactly how to get me to say yes.
Sometime it upsets me when others can go on a day trip with the entire family,
but we have Magnus here and we can’t just go off as a family.
When Sebastian was still living at home, there wasn’t so much time for me, and that made me sad.
I used to cry at school, and my teachers didn’t think I did my homework,
but my parents didn’t have time to help me.
Sebastian takes up an awful lot of time so he can’t live at home. One minute he’ll empty the fridge,
and while we clean up, he’ll shower with his clothes on. At last it was too much,
my parents were very stressed and so was I. I tried to do my homework at school
so I didn’t have to do it at home.
When Sebastian moved, it was lovely because I didn’t have responsibility for him all the time,
and strange because there wasn’t someone running around with a ball or making funny noises.
I really missed that. So it was both good and bad.
I want to sit alone.
Jens and Kirstine are going shopping with their mother.
No, sit next to each other over there. I don’t want to sit next to him
I am okay with it, except that sometimes she gets really really cross.
We are going to buy the frame we need to make the photo collage for Helene.
When she’s in a rage, she sometimes slams the door.
Once she slammed the door so hard we needed a new door.
She can be embarrassing, for example when she’s suddenly singing out loud.
I think it’s quite irritating, and so does Helene.!
Well, maybe you shouldn’t drive, Kirstine
I was a little more negative about it perhaps, when I was younger.
What about this one? It’s okay. Let’s ask Jens. Okay, ask him.
For example, if we are out somewhere, and people do stare when Kirstine starts screaming,
then it’s a little embarrassing, really.
What about this size? it’s fine. Okay?
It’s really tough, I think, if your brothers or sisters are madly embarrassing in public.
Kirstine, it’s an adult film. No, it’s not, no.
Bedtime for Kirstine can be a challenge for the family and for Jens.
Hi Jens, little potty
She can get really annoyed, when mum and dad tell her to turn down the music because I have to sleep,
or to turn it off because she needs to go to sleep.
Bedtime. I don’t care. You know, that’s what it’s like. Go away. It’s almost ten o’clock. Go away.
Kirstine, I am not leaving. Don’t touch me. Alright, Kirstine, I am finding your shampoo. What else do you need? I don’t know..
When she gets really angry, it scares me, and I sleep downstairs.
I worry that maybe she’ll come into my room. Then I lie under the covers.
I’ll leave the door half-open, right? Sleep tight.
In the past year Magnus has had pneumonia 6 times and has often had to go to hospital.
When Magnus suddenly has to go to hospital and you wake up with the ambulance in the drive, it’s hard.
Then we have to go away in order not to stress mum and dad.
It’s hard not to know what’s going on with him, and I’m afraid he’ll die.
He’s had a plastic tube put in so that he can get injections that way.
Right now we are waiting for the plastic tube to be removed because he’s doing well.
I want to sleep. Yes, you go to sleep now.
Right now they are operating on Magnus.
I expect it will be okay, but it feels a little funny that people have their hands inside him.
My everyday life can be very different from my classmates’.
They go to sports and only think about themselves. I also think a lot about Magnus when he’s in hospital.
I often go here with my family and bring my homework,
but you can’t ask them much before they freak out.
Will he get a scar? Yes, they sewed inside his veins, in the middle layer and then on the outside.
My mum’s stressed all the time, and that can be difficult because I just want to help, but she feels that I am in the way.