National Siblings Day 2025 happens every year on April 10th. In 1995, a woman named Claudia Evart initiated National Siblings Day. In 1998, she launched the Siblings Day Foundation, a 501.c.3 non-profit organization. He personal drive for establishing a day to recognize siblings – in the same way we recognize mothers on Mother’s Day and fathers on Father’s Day – was the untimely, early passing of her brother and sister.
She established the following goals for National Siblings Day:
- Honor the people who were instrumental in shaping our lives and influencing our values, ideals, and core beliefs.
- Reunite siblings separated by circumstances such as distance, adoption, or other factors.
- Encourage, when and only when appropriate, siblings separated by interpersonal or family dynamics to consider reconciliation.
President Bill Clinton recognized National Siblings Day in 1999. In March 2016, President Obama released this statement about National Siblings Day:
“The diverse traditions and experiences that make up our lives at home become the foundations of who we are as people, and the bonds of family have remained at the heart of America’s story since our earliest days. On our journey to self-discovery, siblings are around when we need them most, offering a sense of shared understanding that only they can know…Through life’s many chapters, brothers and sisters, and even friends who are just as close, know the power unconditional love and friendship hold to lift us up, make us our best selves, and help us reach for our higher aspirations.”
In a time when the Surgeon General of the United States issues advisories about the dangers of loneliness and warnings about our ongoing youth mental health crisis, one thing we can do – if we’re lucky enough to have them – is look to our siblings. They can help us with both. They can help us feel less lonely and isolated, and they can support us when we need it most.
The Role of Siblings
Sometimes our siblings needle us and annoy us and it seems like their only reason for existing is to do exactly that: see our mistakes and let us and the world know about them loud and clear. But there are also times when they do the opposite. They support us, they listen to us, they help us, and they protect us.
Siblings can be a mixed bag – love them dearly and at times seriously not want to love them at all – for the same reason:
In most cases, except for our parents, they’ve known us far longer than anyone else on the planet, and can see us in ways that no one else, including parents, can.
That’s why they’re so important. They’ve been there since the beginning, and in some cases, they’re with us our entire lives. Siblings matter. It’s really simple. And if you’re connected to your sibling, you can use National Siblings Day to recognize that, tell them how you feel, and celebrate their role in your life.
However, we know not all sibling relationships are perfect, and the presence of a mental health disorder may disrupt and complicate the family dynamic, lead to problems between siblings, and upset balance and harmony on the family.
To be clear, there’s no blame to assign when a sibling develops a mental health disorder, just like there’s no one to blame when a family member or sibling develops an injury or an illness.
At the same time, it’s important to recognize that the presence of a mental health disorder – especially if it’s serious, and the symptoms are disruptive – can indeed have a significant impact on family dynamics and impair the way a family functions on a daily basis.
Since most of our articles on families revolve around ways to support the family member with a mental health or behavioral health challenge or diagnosis, this article will focus on the sibling or siblings without a diagnosis.
The Other Siblings: How to Help Them on National Siblings Day
We encourage parents with children, whether young, adolescent, or young adult, who have a mental health disorder and children who don’t have a mental health disorder, whether young, adolescent, or young adult, to visit the website maintained by The Sibling Support Project. This organization has an important mission:
“[Support] the millions of brothers and sisters of people with special health, development, and mental health concerns.”
The fact is that when one child in a family has a mental health disorder, everyone feels the effect – including siblings. Like parents, siblings experience a wide range of complex and often contradictory emotions. They love their siblings, worry about them, and fear for their long-term health and wellbeing. They may also be angry, and feel guilt, shame, or blame – directed toward themselves, their parents, or their siblings – and have difficulty understanding and/or managing those emotions.
That means they support, too. Experts on this specific aspect of sibling dynamics published a helpful resource to support families with children with and without mental health challenges/issues/disorders. We used that resource to create the following list for parents working to manage this complex and challenging family dymamic.
Parents: Five Ways to Support Siblings of Children With Mental Health Challenges
1. Keep Them in the Loop.
- When one child has a significant mental health issue, the other children need to know about it. They need real information delivered at an age-appropriate level. Parents should understand that keeping a mental health issue a secret from the other kids will backfire, and in the long run, damage the kind of trust that’s the foundation of supportive family relationships. It’s also important to recognize – out in the open – that the child with the diagnosis may need more attention, time, and resources than the child without the diagnosis. That may not feel fair to the child without the diagnosis, but in most cases, they’ll be on board with helping their sibling meet and overcome their challenges.
2. Acknowledge their Feelings.
- As we mention above, the child without a diagnosis often experiences strong feelings they think they shouldn’t. They may feel bitter, angry, and resentful toward their sibling – and feel guilty and terrible about themselves for having those feelings. They may feel sad, lonely, and left out. They may feel like they don’t matter anymore, or somehow matter less than their sibling. The most important thing they need to know is this:
It’s okay and perfectly natural to have all those feelings and having them does not make them a bad person.
- Parents can create a safe place for them to express their emotions, positive and negative, and help them work through the intense feelings they have. If they have a hard time working through those feelings, though, then professional support can make a difference. A child, teen, or young adult may need to talk to someone else who’s not a family member, parent, or someone close to the situation. They may simply need to talk to an objective third-party there to listen to them, focus on them only, and help them work through the challenges they face in their new family dynamic.
3. Remind them You’re in it Together.
- To make a good run at life, it helps to have a team. Parents can help the non-diagnosed child by teaching them to see their family that way. Your family is your team, all working to get through – as Prince Rogers Nelson so eloquently wrote 25 years ago – this thing called life. When one family member has problems, the others help.
- That’s true for mundane things, like helping each other out with chores or homework, but it’s also true for the big, consequential things, like when a family member develops a chronic illness or has a major injury. In families, everyone adjusts to help them recover. The family circles the wagons and supports the person who needs help the most at that time. That’s how it works.
- Parents can remind their non-diagnosed child that if they were the one who needed support, they’d get it: it’s not always easy to recalibrate your own expectations in order to help others, but sometimes that’s exactly what has to happen for the good of everyone involved.
4. Take Them to Family Therapy Sessions.
- Evidence shows that when the entire family – with children at appropriate ages, of course – participate in the treatment process, outcomes improve. In addition, most high-quality treatment centers encourage, and in some cases require, family participation in the treatment process. We encourage parents with a child in treatment to consult with the treatment team about sibling participation in family therapy groups. Siblings have at least two roles to play, here. First, they can offer insight no one else can: as we mention above, they’ve been there the whole time, and their opinion matters. Second, the more they learn about what’s going on with their sibling, i.e. the science and facts about mental health and mental health treatment, the better they can support their sibling on their healing journey.
5. Make Time for Them.
- While this may be the hardest thing to do, it may be the most important. Somehow, someway, find time to spend with them, and them alone. Let them decide. Ask them what they want to do. A movie, a concert, shopping, a special meal, a cool event, or even a small trip or day trip – make suggestions or put it in their hands. They may want a movie night, just you and them. They want to go for ice cream – just you and them. In any case, make sure to make time for them. If you check in, and they say they’re all good, then making time can make it that much better.
- They may not know they need that time with you until they have it.
- Parents can take this time to reiterate their love and commitment to them, and remind them that they’re there for them, too, and will always have the time and energy to love and support them.
Those tips remind parents and siblings that the while the task before them may not be easy, it will be easier to manage if everyone works together, acknowledges everyone’s specific needs, and works to meet them the best they can.
National Siblings Day: What Siblings Want Parents and Providers to Know
Claudia Evart founded National Siblings Day and Siblings Day Foundation, but there’s another excellent resource for everything sibling: The Sibling Support Project (SSP). It was created specifically to support siblings of people with special needs, disabilities, or serious mental health disorders. The SSP has an impressive breadth of resources available, including:
- SibNet: This is the first sibling group of its kind, founded in 1996 for people with siblings with special needs, serious/significant disabilities, or serious/severe mental health disorders.
- Sib20: A group for people in their 20s with siblings with special needs or significant disabilities, including severe/serious mental health disorders.
- SibTeen: A group for teens with siblings with special needs, disabilities, or serious/severe mental health disorders.
In addition, the SSP hosts groups for fathers and grandparents of children with special needs, disabilities, or significant mental health disorders. However, when exploring the resources on their site, one document stood out:
What Siblings Would Like Parents and Service Providers to Know
That page includes a list of (20) twenty things the siblings wanted parents and providers to know and understand. We encourage parents and siblings to click the link and read the entire list. We streamlined the list of twenty down to (5) five, which we’ll share now.
Five Things Siblings Want Parents and Providers to Know
1. Girls are not the only caregivers.
- In many cases, caregiving duties fall the to the females in the family. Siblings want parents and providers to understand that the entire family should help support the sibling with challenges – not juts the females.
2. We need help finding peer support.
- Siblings say there are times when they don’t want to talk to a parent, a professional, a coach, teacher, or mentor: what they want is to talk to other people going through the same thing they are. That’s why parents should help siblings find support groups that cater to their needs.
3. Please set expectations for our sibling.
- Siblings say they want their parents and their siblings’ providers to ensure everyone in the family is accountable for their behavior. They want parents and providers to set realistic standards for their sibling with a mental health, emotional, or behavioral disorder. Yes, they understand their siblings have challenges, and they also understand their siblings can learn to manage their symptoms and behavior.
4. We want to feel safe in our homes.
- In some cases, sibling behavioral and mental health issues result in behaviors that eclipse what the non-diagnosed sibling can handle, based on their developmental stage or level of emotional maturity. This is true on both emotional and physical levels. When diagnosed siblings engage in behaviors that put their safety at risk, the non-diagnosed siblings want parents and providers to understand they have the right to a safe home environment.
5. We want you to help us set expectations for us.
- Siblings want to help, but they need help helping. Teens or younger siblings may try to be the kid in the family that no one worries about, who’s fine by themselves, and needs no special attention, all while going above and beyond to help their diagnosed sibling. That’s way too much to expect of a child or teenager – and they need your help establishing the parameters of their role in the family.
That last point is critical: when one sibling has a mental health disorder and needs a large amount of support, we encourage parents to find ways for the siblings to be themselves and step through the typical stages of development, which means making mistakes, having successes, and having their share of typical days when nothing special happens – other than the magic of growing up.
