Katharina Buczek
This young seventeen-year-old girl has two older siblings– her sister Joanne, who is twenty-four, and her brother Cody, who is nineteen.
She claims that Joanne is “severely autistic” and also has Down syndrome. So, her sister reportedly has the mental age of a child between the ages of five and seven with “little to no hope” of maturing beyond that point.
This means that Joanne constantly needs to be monitored, has frequent meltdowns, and is sensory-seeking. Her brother, Cody, is also severely autistic and has the mental age of an eighteen-month-old.
Now, she claims that she is autistic, too. However, her support needs are relatively low compared to her siblings, and she is able to pass as neurotypical.
“So I feel like I get pushed aside a lot,” she said.
At home, Joanne and Cody share a bedroom since one parent always has to be with both of them. In turn, she gets her own bedroom, and her parents also have “their room,” which is really just overrun with her siblings’ belongings and only sleeps one of her parents at a time.
There was also a guest room in her house at one point. Honestly, though, she claimed that no one ever wants to have dinner at her home, let alone a sleepover. In turn, that room never really got any use.
So, for this past Christmas, her parents decided that “Santa” was going to convert the guest room into a sensory room as a gift for Joanne and Cody since that would allow them to have more space in their room.
Now, that whole endeavor cost her parents about ten thousand dollars. On top of that, her siblings also received some new toys, and Joanne even got a second brand new iPad– because “apparently she needs two at a time now.”
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