Testing a Family Conflict Intervention for Parents and Typically Developing Adolescent Siblings of Individuals with Intellectual and/or Developmental Disabilities

Parents and typically developing (TD) youth siblings of individuals with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD) often experience greater caregiving burden, stress, and hardships in family functioning. They are at increased risk of family conflict and youth adjustment problems when TD siblings are adolescents since they need to balance caregiving responsibilities and various changes that naturally occur during adolescence. However, there is a lack of intervention research on parents and TD adolescent siblings that focuses on family conflict and family-wide participation. This study analyzed whether participating in a brief family intervention could improve families' knowledge of marital and family-wide conflict and TD adolescents' adjustment problems. We found that mothers and fathers significantly improved their knowledge of marital conflict and that TD adolescents significantly improved their knowledge of family-wide conflict. We also found that fathers reported significant reductions in internalizing and externalizing problems in TD adolescents. The findings support the impact of even brief evidence-based interventions targeting family-level improvements for families with both TD adolescent siblings and individuals with IDD. The findings also accentuate the significance of involving both mothers and fathers in family intervention research, suggesting that different caregivers may experience both shared and unique benefits from participating.