ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses precisely on such co-construction of meaning and representations between children. Certain stages in the life of the group of siblings are crucially significant in determining the way in which each of the children, whether alone or with the others, subjectivates the disability. Shame and guilt are often involved in the process of subjectivation of the disability in children. When a younger child achieves greater maturity than the elder disabled brother or sister, this arouses ambivalent reactions in the parents and in both children concerned. Children imagine that their parents are responsible for the disease or for being unable to find a cure for it. Children identify with the shame they know inhabits their parents. Thus, they notice that even if the parents do not say so explicitly, they go out from home as little as possible so as not to have to confront various situations that might give rise to a feeling of shame.
