Preparing the Older Child

Welcoming the new baby as a family

Most prenatal classes will teach you about labor, breastfeeding, breathing techniques, car seats, and what to put in your hospital bag. Almost none of them will teach you the work of preparing your older child for the arrival of a new sibling. That work is one of the most important things you will do in the third trimester, and it will shape how your two children know each other for the next eighty years.

In my 40 years of practice, I noticed parents spend more time introducing pets to children than introducing a new baby to their children. This same family will bring a new baby home from the hospital, walk through the front door while the older child watches, and assume an introduction will take place on its own. It will not. The older child needs the same careful, deliberate introduction the pet gets. Unlike pets, the older child understands enough to feel the change but not enough to articulate it.

There are actually classes designed to introduce your pet to your child and your child to your pet; therefore, such training does not occur in a vacuum. There are actually classes designed to do that.

The new baby’s arrival is not just the addition of a sibling to your family. The child at home loses a position it has had since its birth. Moving from being the only child to being one of two is real, and it is universal. Every family that has a second child needs to decide whether the older child gets help working through this change or is left to work through it alone.

In the weeks after the new baby arrives, you may notice some of the following in your older child:

• Regression such as a toilet-trained child wetting the bed again or a child who had been sleeping through the night waking up several times.
• Baby talk, or requests to be carried that they had outgrown.
• Attention-seeking behavior that may look like acting out.
• In a quieter child, simply withdrawing and becoming still and watchful instead of demanding.

These are not bad behaviors. They are your older child’s way of indicating that something fundamental has changed and they are trying to find their footing. These are not signs that you have failed at preparing them. Even well-prepared children will exhibit some of these behaviors. But with well-prepared children these behaviors will have less depth and the duration. 

This replacement phenomenon is not restricted to the first child. It occurs to the second child when the third child arrives, and it occurs to the third child when the fourth child arrives, and so on. The problem occurs in the child who is being replaced, or that is at least the unconscious perception of the child who is losing its position in the family.

Family Relationships Change with Each New Member

Before the new baby arrives, take a moment to consider what is about to change in the household. The family is not just gaining a new member. This one new member will create many new family relationships at once. Before the first child, a couple has two relationships: how the mother relates to the father, and how the father relates to the mother. With the first child, that the number of relationships grows to six. The now mother and father each have a relationship with the baby and the baby has a relationship with each of them. With the second child, the number of relationships grows to twelve. With the third child, to twenty. With the fourth child, to thirty. While the relationship ratio is not strictly geometric, neither is it algebraic.

Each new family member adds more relationships than the last. What this means for your older child is that their relationship with you is changing, not because you love them less, but because the field of relationships around them is rapidly expanding. They will feel this even before they can name it. Parents should anticipate these changes before they become a problem. In this case, a stitch in time really does save nine. The problems which arise from the rapid relationship change and exploding relationship dynamics can for the most part be prevented.

Preparing your older child for the coming baby has two equally important parts. The first part is to dedicate time alone with your older child. The second part is to share activities in which both children are included at the same time. After the new baby arrives, find at least fifteen minutes every day to give your older child your undivided attention. No baby in your lap. No phone in your hand. No half-attention while you stir something on the stove. Fifteen minutes of you being fully present with your first child.

This is not optional. It reassures your child that you are still their parent, that they are still important, that the new baby has not taken something away from that cannot be replaced. The activity can be anything they want to do whether it’s reading, playing, going for a walk, or building something with blocks. The activity is not the point. Your attention is the point.

Both parents should do this, separately, when possible. Two parents, each giving fifteen minutes of full attention to that child is not the same as one person giving thirty. The older child needs the to receive the message that each parent individually, has time for the child nearest in order to the newborn.

Solo time with your next older child is necessary, but not sufficient, because most of the day will not be solo time. Most of the day will involve both children and how you handle those moments determines whether the older child experiences the baby as someone who took their parent away, or as someone they get to share their parent with. Continued solid, and positive relationship with the parents will help the children to bond with each other. It is important that the children develop or are allowed to develop their own relationships with each other. And they will do that if you let them. Sibling jealousy is created by the parents. It is not inherent in the children. The baseline is the development of normal sibling relationships, and not sibling rivalry.

The key is to find activities that include both children at the same time, activities where neither child is being asked to wait while the other is attended to because there are no turns. When you change the baby’s diaper, bring the older child in. Not as a fetch-and-carry helper sent to find the wipes, but as a real participant. Let the older child gently touch the baby. Talk to both of them about what you are doing and why. Let the older child learn the baby’s smell, the baby’s warmth, the small noises the baby makes. The lesson of the diaper change is not the diaper. The lesson is that the older child is allowed to see the baby, touch the baby, and know the baby in a way that builds familiarity, thrust and love rather than distance.

Over time, the older child stops being a spectator to the baby and starts being part of the baby’s life. That knowledge is the foundation of the bond between them and it begins with small moments like this one.
Once you understand the principle, you can find versions of it in every part of the day. Here are some ways to start:
• Bath time when the older child: helping pour water gently over the baby’s body, learning how to handle a baby with care.
• Mealtime where the older child is included in the conversation about the baby: asked what they think the baby would like, told stories about themselves when they were a baby.
• Walks with the stroller: the older child walking alongside, holding your hand or helping push, part of the outing rather than left behind.
• Singing to both children: with one in your arms and one on your lap, the same song reaching both of them at once.
• Looking at family photographs together: narrating who is who, how the family came to be, where the older child fits in the family’s story, where the baby fits.
• Telling the older child stories about themselves as a baby: making clear that the new baby is going through what the older child once went through, and that the older child knows this territory from experience.
• Reading stories works for both or all offspring.

The principle is the same in all of these activities. Both children are present, both children included, and your attention is spread across both at once without either being asked to wait.

When the Family Grows Again

If you go on to have a third or fourth child, the same principles apply, with one useful twist. It is always the child immediately above the new baby, the one who has just lost the position as youngest, who experiences the most displacement. With the third pregnancy, attention to the second child is what matters most. With the fourth, the third child.

The first child, by the time of the third pregnancy, has already adjusted to not being the only one and is in a more stable position. The work moves down the line. The principle is the same. The person who most needs the preparation most will change with each new arrival.

The work of welcoming a new baby into a family is one of the most rewarding jobs of parenting. Done well, it builds bonds between siblings that last for the rest of their lives. The two preparations, solo time for the older child and shared activities that include both children do not require special skills or special products or an expert. They require only your willingness to think about what your older child is experiencing and to include them in the welcoming of their new sibling.

Your children will know each other for longer than they will know anyone else in their lives. The work you do in these weeks before the baby arrives and in the months after sets the foundation for that relationship. It is worth doing carefully, deliberately, and with more attention than you would give to introducing a new puppy or kitten to your family.

As I said above your children want to like and love each other; that’s the baseline and you will spend much less time and more positive time if you allow and facilitate those relationships, and above all do not discipline the child who is being replaced. If you find that the second child is poking a pencil in the nose or ears of the third child as soon as you are not supervising them, you have an emergency situation which you must remedy immediately, and the remedy is not discipline. It is love and the demonstration of love through the good time you devote to them.