Autism Research and Treatment by phone with friends. They appreciated the opportunity to share their feelings and thoughts with other siblings who experienced similar challenges and rewards in living with their brothers or sisters with ASDs. Bagenholm and Gillberg [43] found that some siblings could talk comfortably only with someone outside the home about their brothers or sis- ters with disabilities. None of our interviewees explicitly told us that they purposely sought support outside their homes, but we noted that they all described peers as their sources of support. In studying the adjustment of siblings of children with ASDs, Meyer et al. [39] found a positive correlation between the severity of ASDs and siblings’ adjustment problems. Our participants’ descriptions of their adjustment and coping strategies also reﬂected this relation, especially in light of maladaptive behaviors. Some of our interviewees said that they sought quiet time and space when they needed respite from their siblings. Consideration of siblings’ explanations of the coping strategies they employ may be helpful in planning support group programs for these children. Previous researchers have found, as we did, that typically developing siblings often help to manage the behavior of and teach their younger siblings with disabilities (e.g., [18, 47, 52, 53]), modeling appropriate social behaviors and func- tional skills for them (e.g., [54]) and engaging in prosocial interactions with them (e.g., [55, 56]). Our sibling partici- pants told us that their parents had taught them some strate- gies to use to calm or redirect their siblings when needed and that they used positive reinforcement to encourage their siblings to exhibit prosocial behavior. They also directly taught their siblings new skills that helped them function more eﬀectively in social situations. 5. Limitations and Scope of the Study Although we used stringent qualitative research methods for this study, we recognize that the validity of the ﬁndings may be aﬀected by some limitations. The ﬁrst limitation of this study is that we did not establish extended relationships with the participants. We interviewed each sibling only once. Multiple interviews would have been ideal; however, we feel that our interview data and our analysis of them provide a strong foundation for examination of these participants’ perspectives on their experiences as siblings of children with ASDs. We also recognize that the generalizability of the ﬁndings may be limited by the nature of our participants. Although these ﬁndings are based on the perspectives of only 12 siblings from a small geographic area within one state, these participants ranged in age from 7 to 15 and reﬂected a variety of family lifestyles. We also did not include triangu- lation methods in this study as Guba and Lincoln [57] re- commended for reducing researcher bias. 6. Recommendations for Research and Practice We concur with Smith and Elder’s [40] contention that more work needs to be done, especially in the area of intervention research to identify eﬀective strategies that support typically 9 developing children as they adapt to the challenges faced in living with siblings with ASDs. We recommend more explo- ration on strategies that facilitate cohesion among siblings, extending the work of researchers like Strain and Danko [58]. We also support Meyer et al.’s [39] call for more research on the assessment of the functioning of all family subsystems when children with ASDs are involved. Our ﬁndings only scratch the surface of the wealth of information practitioners, and researchers may learn from siblings of children with ASDs. We echo Petalas et al.’s [23] exhortation to apply these preliminary ﬁndings to larger-scale studies to shed light on siblings’ experiences that may inform practice related to sup- port services for these youth. More research is also needed on the eﬀects of various types and aspects of family systems [5] and the varied experi- ences of siblings within families of diverse cultures [38]. The perceptions our participant siblings shared with us conﬁrm the ﬁndings related to the positive eﬀects of growing up with siblings with disabilities, including high family cohesion and less sibling rivalry [20, 59, 60]. However, our children were only from Midwestern Caucasian families. More longitudinal research on the eﬀects of family mem- bers with ASDs on typically developing siblings is also neces- sary. Such longitudinal research would extend the research conducted by Orsmond et al. [8] on growing up with family members with ASDs and its eﬀects on future caregiving rela- tionships. 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