ABSTRACT
Whilst there is interest and concern for parents of learning disabled children and their experiences of caring, brothers and sisters are rarely considered. What this suggests, we think, is that their experiences are thought to be irrelevant to the ways in which families manage. Indeed, many parents say explicitly that they do not want to place extra burdens on their sons and daughters as a result of their having multiple commitments, although they do worry that they are unable to give all their children sufficient time (Beresford, 1995). Children within these families are immediately placed at the receiving end of what Franklin (1986) describes as arbitrary parental authority, in terms of decisions they (the parents) have made along with their underlying assumptions. This authority in turn leads to both family practices and the provision of supports to families that take no account of the perspectives or experiences of the children. Franklin (1986) describes the way in which this type of arbitrary parental authority, amongst other things, denies children fundamental rights to a say in the progress of their own lives. The least we can do to reassert their rights is to listen to what the children say.
