If you are expecting a new baby and you are worried about how your firstborn is going to handle the transition from only child to older sibling, you’ve come to the right place! I have ten tips for you on how to help an older sibling deal with the addition of a new brother or sister into their lives.
When I was pregnant with my twins, my oldest daughter was four. She was five by the time they were born. And these are some of the things that I did, which I believe helped tremendously to ease that transition for her and develop and strengthen that strong bond between older sister and new baby brother and sister. So these are the ten things that I did. I hope some of these can help you with the transition in your own family!
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Helping Your Child Adjust to a New Baby – Tip #1
The first thing you need to do to help your first born adjust to a new baby is to include the older sibling right from the start. You might be uncomfortable announcing your pregnancy too soon, but I encourage you to share the news with your child before you share it with any other family member, other than the other parent of course. Don’t be telling your best friend or grandma or all these other people, because really the next most important relationship is going to be that sibling relationship. It’s really only fair that the child you already have is included when you learn that you’re pregnant.
As soon as you’re ready to share your pregnancy with anyone other than your spouse or partner, share it with your child first, and then from then on, include them as much as you can. I brought my daughter – kind of out of necessity because she wasn’t in school – but I brought her to almost all of my doctor’s appointments during my pregnancy. She saw the ultrasounds of her baby brother and sister. We got excited together about discovering what the baby’s genders were going to be and things like that. She was really involved right from the beginning and didn’t feel like an outsider in my pregnancy.
Older Sibling/New Baby Tip #2
You know how when you’re expecting a new baby, you want to set up the nursery and get everything all ready for their arrival? Setting all the things up for that new baby can be super exciting, but you have to make sure that you include your firstborn in all of that excitement.
Let them choose some of the things for the new baby. Let them help decorate the nursery, and at the same time, it would be really awesome if you could give their bedroom some sort of a remodel. Or maybe at this time they’re going to be changing rooms from the nursery to a big boy or big girl room. Maybe they’re going to be transitioning from a toddler bed into a big girl bed, something like that. Make that special too!
With my older daughter, we painted her room. We let her pick out this awful color. Sort of a bubblegum pink color that I kind of maybe wish she hadn’t picked, but it’s her room. So we let her pick and we painted it together. We made it really fun. We got her a big girl bed and new bedding and all of that. We wanted her to know that her new role as big sister was special. It’s something that you need to celebrate and focus on just as much as you’re focusing on the anticipation of a new baby.
Helping Your Child Adjust to a New Baby – Big Brother/Sister Gift
The third thing I did when I was expecting the twins, I read about this somewhere and I thought it was a really good idea, was I bought a gift for my daughter that I saved for when I went into the hospital. I had intended to have her come to the hospital when I went into labor. Unfortunately, the day that my water broke with the twins, right at that moment, my oldest daughter was in the midst of a nasty stomach virus. It was awful. So she couldn’t come with us to the hospital because she was so sick. But as soon as my husband went back home to be with our daughter, he gave her the gift.
It was important to us that there was something special for her to mark becoming a big sister. It can be anything – a big sister shirt or something like that. In my case, I got her a Barbie set that had an older sister with two younger siblings. It was a family Barbie thing that she really loved.
So it really doesn’t matter what the gift is, whether big or small, whether personalized, if that’s your thing or not. But just having something to mark that your son or daughter is now becoming a big brother or sister is really important because that is a special time, just as special as the birth of the new baby. Just as that is special, transitioning to Big Brother or Big Sister is also special and needs to be celebrated. And having that well timed gift can help ease even just a little bit of the anxiety that comes with Mommy going off to give birth.
Tip #4 – When Visitors Come
Another thing I had read about that I did was to buy a few little just cheap kind of gifts that I hid away in case a family member came to visit the twins and brought a gift and didn’t bring anything for my older daughter. And I know a lot of people will look at this and say, well, you don’t buy your older daughter a gift on her brother’s or sister’s birthday. And that’s true. But you’ve got to understand, this is a big, big transition for them.
It’s not the same as everyone getting a participation trophy or something like that. This is a big change. And when a person shows up, a family member or friend with a gift for that new baby and they have nothing for the older sibling – put yourself in the shoes of that sibling. Think about how you would feel. You would likely feel as though the baby is more important now. And even though the birth of a new baby is extremely special and it’s something that definitely deserves to be celebrated, if you want the transition to be as easy as possible, as smooth as possible, if you want to avoid as much turmoil as possible, just have those gifts hidden away. It’s not a big deal.
I was lucky I actually did not have to use them as far as I can remember. I just saved them to give later on. Mostly everyone understood and when they came to visit the babies, they did bring a big sister gift. And I thought that was really awesome and thoughtful that most people realized that. But not everyone thinks of that, especially people that don’t have kids of their own. So just having those few little gifts hidden away that you can bring out if your child didn’t get something when someone came to visit the babies, it really makes a difference. You don’t want them to feel left out
New Sibling Tip # 5
Another thing that can really help your child adjust to a new baby is to get them involved with helping care for the baby right from the start. Depending on their age, obviously, the more you may allow them to do. Try to pick something that actually is helpful for you because kids can kind of tell whether they’re really helping or not.
My oldest daughter actually was a big help to me when the twins came, because twins were really hard! And if my husband wasn’t there, there were a lot of times where one was crying while I was feeding the other and I needed her to maybe just hold a bottle for the other baby or just be with the other baby and let them know Mommy will be there as soon as she can.
Whatever it may be, if you can involve the older child right from the start in helping to care for the baby and let them know that they are actually helping you and it’s actually helpful, that can really help ease the transition for them.
Tip # 6 – Don’t Blame the Baby
Tip number six is an often overlooked but really, really important tip – don’t get in the habit of blaming the baby. And what I mean by this is, if you’re in the middle of changing a diaper and your older child asks you to get them a glass of water, don’t say “After I’m done changing the baby” or “When I’m done with the baby.” Say something like, “Sure, honey, I’ll do that in a minute.”
So you take the focus off the fact that it’s the baby causing your child to have to wait. It sounds so subtle and simple, but it really actually matters because when you get in the habit of saying, “Well, the baby needs this first,” or, “I have to take care of the baby first,” or, “Once I’m done feeding the baby,” it makes it seem to the older sibling like having this baby here is really an inconvenience to their life, and it’s going to cause resentment.
Whereas if you just change your wording a little bit and say, “Sure, Mommy will be there in a minute,” or something like that, it just has a more positive spin. Without focusing on the baby, you will be surprised at what a difference it makes. Instead of your older child feeling bad, throwing a fit because you are attending to the baby first, they understand, okay, Mom’s going to help me as soon as she can and it makes a world of difference.
Helping Your Child Adjust to a New Sibling – Tip #7
Tip number seven, which is pretty obvious, but I definitely don’t want to leave off the list, is to make sure that you set aside special one on one time with the older sibling right from the start. Even if you’re tired, when you’re nursing the baby, you can certainly try to read a story to your older child or even just pick a movie to watch together or ask them to show you their new dance moves.
Just focus on your older child as much as you can. When the baby naps take that time, even if you’re tired, even if the house is a mess, it’s really important to just take that time and spend some quality one on one time with the older child where it’s just you and them.
With the twins, it was really hard. It took a long time before we got into the rhythm that we are now. But in those early days, I just tried as much as possible to spend as much time with my oldest, because think about it. Your older child is used to all of your attention. So you still need to try to give them as much of that attention as you can. You can’t just rip that all away and start to focus it all on the baby, even though that baby is an infant and they need you and they need so much attention, You’ve got to figure out ways that you can give the baby what they need while still attending to your older child. Baby wearing can really help with this!
And of course, if you can, take turns with your spouse or partner so one of you takes the baby and one goes and does something with your older child and then flip flop. Just make sure they’re getting that quality one on one attention with you guys. It’s really, really important. It can be easy to kind of just put it off because newborns require so much of us, but don’t put it off, make it a priority. It’ll really make a difference.
Tip #8 – Allow All Feelings
Tip number eight is to allow all feelings. Your older child is going to have some feelings about this big change and they’re not all going to be pretty. And you don’t want to minimize any of those feelings. So they might at times say they hate the baby. They might say they wish you never had another child. They might say things that are hurtful. Don’t minimize them! Don’t tell your child that’s not true. Don’t tell them, “Of course, you love your brother or sister.” Never invalidate their feelings.
It’s not going to last forever. Things will get better. You will get through this transitional time. And what’s really important is to allow your child to feel however they feel about it. You will have good days. You’re going to have not so good days, but don’t invalidate how your older child is feeling. Make sure to show empathy. Make sure you don’t try to minimize anything and don’t punish them if they are having a particularly hard time or are very upset or say something hurtful about the baby. Don’t punish them for that.
Just remember, have empathy. Put yourself in their shoes. Think about what it would feel like. Or perhaps you were once an only child that became an older sibling and you remember a little of what that felt like. Put yourself in their shoes and just allow them to feel how they feel. You will get through it.
How to Help Your Child Adjust to a New Sibling – Tip #9
And in line with that last tip, tip number nine is to accept regressions. They might happen depending on the age. If your child is potty trained, they might want to go back to diapers. They might suddenly want to use a bottle or a pacifier even if they had already given those up.
An older child might start playing baby, talking like a baby, wanting to be held like a baby. Whatever that may be, it makes sense. They see all this attention placed on the baby and whether it’s conscious or not, some part of them realizes that a baby is getting more attention. And so if they act more like a baby, maybe they’ll get more attention too.
You’ll also see children act out negatively. Negative attention is still attention, right? So expect that this stuff is going to happen. Don’t punish, don’t shame. Just try to allow it. If your recently potty trained child wants to go back to diapers for a while, if it were my child, I would let them.
If your older child who was sleeping in their own room wants to to sleep in your bed again, let them. It’s more important in the long run to establish that bond as a family and that sibling bond than it is to worry about insignificant things that aren’t going to matter as much as what you really want, which is your kids to get along together, to love each other, to be happy. I think it’s really important that you just don’t let those things really get to you too much because they’re going to happen. It’s not going to last forever.
Last Tip
And the last thing that I think is really important that you have to kind of consciously be aware of is to not always put the baby first. Now, of course, the baby probably requires more depending on how old your older child is. But you don’t always have to attend to the baby first. If the baby’s crying at the same time that your older child just asked you for a snack, and if you always go to the crying baby first, your other child is going to pick up on that and it’s going to affect them.
It will be okay if the baby cries for an extra minute while you get a snack. It doesn’t have to be every time, but certainly try as much as you can in situations where it’s not going to make that much of a difference. Try to attend to your older child first, or at least be even.
It’s not always possible, but for instance, if they’re all in car seats, get your older child out of the car seat first or into the car seat first rather than the baby every time. If your child is in the middle of telling you something and you realize the baby pooped in their diaper, give it another 30 seconds, it’s not going to make a difference.
So try to not always put the baby first whenever you can, because even though in your mind you think this is an infant, this is a helpless baby, and they need me, which is absolutely true, your older child needs you just as much. In a different way, but just as much.
I hope that these tips helped you to understand the main thing here, which is that as much as a new baby is so exciting and such a blessing and so wonderful, it’s just as much of a change and just as much something to be celebrated for your once only child or youngest child to become an older sibling. Everyone is going through a change, everyone’s going through a transition.
But whereas we are adults with fully developed brains, our children are not. So no matter how much you may explain with your words that nothing has changed, that you still love your older child just as much as you always did, actions speak louder than words, especially for small children. The behaviors that they see in you, what they see you doing, what they see others doing, are going to impact them more than just what you say.
You can tell them until you’re blue in the face that you still love them just as much, but you have to show them, and I hope a lot of these tips help you find ways that you can show them so that everyone’s happier and it’s not such a struggle. So it’s not such a huge transition, even though it will be regardless of what you do. But any little bit helps, right?
You will get through it. My twins are three now and my oldest daughter is 8 and they have an amazing, amazing relationship. I am so blessed, and I like to think, at least in some small part, these things that I did when the twins came helped with that.
