Preparing an older sibling for a new arrival

[Dave07]

How do you prepare an older child for the arrival of a new baby brother or sister? My daughter is less than 2 but I want her to be prepared as much as possible for our new arrival.

 

[noahsdad]

I have seen my friends try different things, and I have also experienced this. For a child less than 2 I am not sure they will fully understand until the baby is here. Then reinforce the fact they are the older sibling and "help and teach". My son really enjoys helping!

 

[Papa Bear]

We involve the older sibling in the activities like preparing the nursery, buying baby things. We let her choose for the baby, so she feels important.

 

[stayathomepaul]

Papa Bear has the right idea. Something else we did was go to the store and pick up a bunch of books about being a big brother and big sister (at the respective times). My daughter used to read her big sister book to my wife's belly when she was pregnant.

 

[WVOz1970]

We were pretty open about discussing it when my son was 3 and little sister was en route. He just kind of accepted the very simple explanations and went about his merry way. The larger thing to prep for was not so much the pregnancy... it was right after arrival. We had to spend a lot of time making sure our oldest realized he wasn't being replaced, even tho most of the attention was on the new arrival.

We are having to deal a lot more with explaining pregnancy now that he is 8 and daughter is 5. One of our close friends is due next month and the questions from our two are much more pointed now.

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