Adversity In My Life

Having grown up with only one older brother for the majority of my life, I had long been the baby of the family. Although my parents never really spoiled me, I never had as many responsibilities as my brother, simply because he was older. When I was eleven, however, my mother and my stepfather had another child: my sister Emilia, or “Emmy” for short. This handed me new responsibilities and marked the beginning of my transition into adulthood within my family, but not only because I became an older sister. One month after her birth, we found out that Emmy has Down syndrome. I knew what that meant, of course. She has three copies of the twenty-first chromosome, her growth and development would be impeded, and she would be very different …show more content…
Not only did I have to lead by example, but I had to take a more active role in teaching her everything she needed to know. I do not expect her to be a genius, but I want her to have as many life skills as possible. I like to sit in on her therapies, although now she has most of them during the day while I am at school, and help her with the exercises her therapists assign her. Now she is much more capable, she needs less help doing everyday activities. Still, there is so much for her to learn, and I do what I can to teach her. She learns especially well through play, and now that she is older and much more interested in the world and the people around her, she is eager for me to play with her. She is growing in her knowledge, skills, and personality every day. I also figured out that an older sister not only has to know when to take action, but when to step back. Emmy is always trying to run off somewhere, so she requires constant observation. Due to the dependency that she has on my parents, they do not have as much time for me. As the youngest child who had always had help with everything, this was a difficult adjustment to make. However, eventually I learned how to be