“He Ain`t Heavy, He`s My Brother”
Complexities and Treatment with Sibling at Boarding Schools

Brotherly relationships are the longest relationship in human life. This is the most significant relationship after a parent-child relationship. The sub-system of children in each family maintains within it a whole world of complex relationships and is one of the essential components of the concept of family. Experiencing the complexity of this relationship gives the child an opportunity to learn about himself in a social context.

In every child placement, a dramatic decision is taken in order to give the child an alternative developmental environment to the one that went wrong in his family. Alongside the improvement in the child`s life, the structure of the family unit is destroyed, including the disengagement from his original brotherhood. One of the functions of the boarding school is to rehabilitate the damage created and to deal with the children`s painful loss of family as they were used to it. According to my experience, understanding the issue of brotherhood and perception of the child as part of a group of children is an important part of the rehabilitation process.

Children in boarding schools have complex and varied sibling relations: direct and indirect; Real and imagined, half-brothers, brothers who remained at home, unknown brothers. So many brothers. On top of that, the child`s boarding school group becomes, within the framework of the child`s life, another `sibling` group - ` the boarding school brotherhood `.

96 children, including 41 siblings, educated at the "Beit Singer" boarding school. Understanding the significance of brotherhood issues, we witness both the psychological drama of the "preferred child" and the "black sheep". We diagnose the "parental child" and try to let them become a child again, while maintaining close contact with his brother or sister. We deal with sibling alienation, symbiotic relationships and more. Recognizing the significance of siblings` relationship, we rarely recommend separating them.

At the Beiz Singer" we operate a variety of programs and assign to the subject of brotherhood as we believe that proper care and attention of the sibling relationship is critical to these children becoming functioning grownups.