Autism Research and Treatment to him about it. And my other friend’s mom works here, actually, and I talk to her about it.” Mitch, age 10, also con- ﬁded in a friend who had a brother with an ASD and felt solidarity from the shared experience: I do have a friend; he used to be in my class. He still goes to my school. He has a brother with autism. I know his brother with autism. So, we were like, “Do you have a brother with autism? Yeah. I do too!” So we’re like, “okay!” and if I wasn’t, like, having a brother with autism, I would have been like, “What the heck are you talking about?” Another coping strategy our participant siblings used was extending support to others. At one point in the interviews we asked about advice they would give to other siblings of children with ASDs. The most detailed response came from Asia, age 14, who said: You just have to get used to it [autism] and don’t think about all the negatives. Think about the positives. Think of all the advantages you have and not the disadvantages. Think of the bright side and think you are lucky they [siblings with ASD] can do as much as they can. Like some kids at the camp are in wheelchairs and are non- verbal, but then there are these kids with autism and you think, “I am so lucky.” With all the frus- trations, you learn to get over it as you get older. So just deal with it now. You try not to get on your siblings’ bad sides. As long as you are nice to them, they will be nice to you. Our participant siblings identiﬁed support from others as a positive and valuable facet of their lives. Our participant siblings also reported actively participat- ing in educating others about ASD. This occurred on both personal and broader-scaled levels. Jared, age 11, described helping his friend, who was a sibling of a child with an ASD, deal with his brother, “We’ll, like, give each other ideas on what to do.” Mitch had written a book about his experiences of having a twin brother with an ASD and had spoken to several groups about his experience: “I get to share most stuﬀ, like diﬀerent stuﬀ, about my brother. I get to tell a story about mine. Um, I get to give presentations about autism, um, in front of 2,518 people.” Ruby also found writing and speaking about her experiences helpful: “Actually I have written some things. I have been working with groups for a while now. In seventh grade, not only did I write a paper but that got published in a newsletter.” 3.4.2. Techniques Used by Participant Siblings. Our partic- ipants spoke of adapting to the experience of living with siblings with ASDs by learning techniques that were eﬀective when dealing with the challenges their siblings posed. They learned these strategies primarily from their parents and focused on techniques that calmed their siblings, redirected their siblings’ attention, and/or taught their siblings new skills. Calming techniques usually occurred once a meltdown 7 was in progress or immediately after. Hanna, age 8, described her calming technique with her sister, “So I don’t try to get too close to her—I’m just, whenever I like, scratch her on her back she kind of calms down.” Other participants talked about using calm voices and modulated tones to help calm their siblings with ASDs. Our participant siblings frequently used redirecting tech- niques to redirect their siblings’ attention. This redirecting usually occurred before potential meltdowns. Jared described his use of this technique: Well, I actually go, like, probably in front of him, or something like that to like, try to get him to like, look at something else or something. I usu- ally say, like, “Keep walking” or something like that. Or, like, “If you be good, you can probably rent a movie on the way back” and he’ll go, “Oh!” This appeared to be an eﬀective use of the Premack principle which states that more probable or preferred behaviors will reinforce less probable or less preferred behaviors [34, 35]. Mitch used this technique, also: “Like, saying, “We just have to do this, but then we can get a Sprite, pretzel, cheese.”” Teaching their siblings new skills was also a technique that our participants used in a proactive manner. It appeared that the siblings chose this strategy to provide their siblings with ASDs with skills that might prevent future challenging behaviors. RaeEllen spoke of trying to improve her brother’s social skills: I’m sort of working with him on how to be social. I’m a social butterﬂy. I’m a social person. We got some coﬀee there, at the Union, with an autistic boy. I’m trying to teach my brother how to set up a “play date.” Cloe, age 7, was trying to teach her brother new vocabulary words which she qualiﬁed, “Like good things—not bad words or anything like that.” Hanna said that, in response to her sister’s continuous repetition of phrases, “sometimes I say, “It kind of is funny, but don’t say it all the time, like that might be kind of annoying.”” These participants were trying to teach their siblings skills that could be used to assist them socially or avert embarrassing social incidents. 4. Discussion This study contributes to the qualitative research literature on the perspectives of typically developing siblings of chil- dren with ASDs on their experiences. More speciﬁcally, our ﬁndings, interpreted through the framework of family sys- tems theory, oﬀer insight into the sibling subsystem, cohe- sion between typically developing siblings and siblings with ASDs, and adaptability of typically developing siblings. Healthy family functioning has been identiﬁed as balanced cohesion and adaptability [5, 6], and our data analysis oﬀered insight into the self-reported cohesion and adaptability of our participant siblings. It is important to note that due to the limited number of participants and the nature of this study (i.e., qualitative