Looking Out for "The Other Kid"

Cutting the apron strings proved difficult for Lorraine Donlon, who fretted as twins Patricia and Eileen's faces slowly disappeared through the school bus window. Would they get along with their teachers? Would their favorite snack, apples, be on the menu?

This would be fairly common matronly angst, except for one thing: Donlon was their sister--all of four years older--and the twins were developmentally disabled.

Donlon was The Other Kid.

"It alters reality," Donlon says in the living room of her Syosset home, still tearing up at the decades-old scene. "You feel scared, lonely, worried. A lot of times the other kid is treated as a small adult."

The Other Kid is healthy, but not necessarily happy. He or she misses baseball games and dance recitals for siblings' radiation treatments. And their voices tend to be muted.

"You feel like your emotions and feelings are invalid," Donlon explains. "If you come home disappointed about getting a bad grade or not making the softball team, it pales in comparison to what everybody else is dealing with. You almost feel like you don't have the right to bother your parents when they've got enough on their plate."

Fortunately, The Other Kid is no longer just a cold classification. It's a children's draw-it-out guidebook sitting on a nearby table, next to its Spanish-translation cousin, El Otro Niño. Written by Donlon and published in 2007, it's now a standard goodie-bag inclusion at places like NYC's Ronald McDonald House and as far away as Australia.

The sections range from "It's Good to Talk About Your Feelings" to "It's Just Not Fair" to "It's Not Your Fault." The left-hand pages gently encourage expressing emotions. The right-hand pages are blank, other than a prompt to draw a picture that represents their feelings.

Donlon has seen the results. Some kids go through the book with their parents, while others go off and do it in private. Donlon notes an e-mail from a mother who knew how angry her daughter was, but never had the conduit to open up. They finally had a much needed and overdue talk.

"Respect what the child wants to share," Donlon suggests. "Treat it like a diary, treat it like a journal."

One of Donlon's most ringing endorsements came by chance. Psychotherapist Marsha Luftig, who happens to live just three doors down, has a disabled daughter and normally functioning son. She now uses The Other Kid as part of her parent workshops for special-needs families. All proceeds from the book go to Adults and Children with Learning and Developmental Disabilities (ACLD) in Bethpage. 

For kids who have had to mature so quickly, Donlon thinks they will get the book's message.

"This lady wrote a book," Donlon says, channeling what she hopes children will say after reading The Other Kid. "If she wrote a book about this for kids all over the world, then somebody gets me. "