How to Prepare Children for the Arrival of a New Sibling

January 4, 2022 Leave a Comment

Having a baby is a wonderful moment in the life of all parents, no matter if it is the first or second baby. However, if you already have older children, then you must be sure of the attitude of your kids to the younger baby that you are planning to have or expecting at the moment. Your older children should be 100% ready for the coming of the baby and there are numerous practices of how to do it correctly avoiding harm to the mental health of older kids.

The approach has to be individual considering the character of each of your kids. Therefore, we would like to present to you the pro tips on how to prepare children for the arrival of a new sibling and save the harmony within your family.

How to prepare children for the arrival of a new sibling

How to prepare children for the arrival of a new sibling

Make sure your kids are ready

Do not try to hide the information that you are expecting a new baby as it can have only a bad influence on your relationships with children. You should tell your kids about everything during pregnancy like what changes are expected to be in your family, how your older children will take part in the care of a newborn baby. You need to assure them that your attention will be enough for everyone in the family to calm the kids down. Additionally, you can discuss why you decided to have one more kid not to make older children feel abandoned. Moreover, you can teach your kids how to care about the newborn children – how to hold it, how much time the walking can take, how many hours of sleep it requires, and other basic things your older kids should know to be a great support for you in case of need.

Encourage your kids to talk about their feelings

There is no secret that discussion of everything makes the situation clearer and easier for everyone involved. Encourage your children to talk about every specter of feeling related to the coming of a new sibling. Ask how they feel before the arrival and how they are expecting to feel after. After the newborn baby is home, you should also pay attention to your older kids and wonder how and what they feel to prevent harm to their mental health. You have to understand that your older children get into huge stress and you need to be loving and caring to them as well as to the newborn.

Dedicate time to spend together with each kid

It is hard to distribute your time properly when you have a little baby who doesn’t have any timetable yet. However, you need to think ahead of how you are going to spend your time with other kids and experience parents, meaning those who have several kids, have some knowledge on how to dedicate time to everyone including a newborn kid. It is important to spend time with each of your children separately doing the activities that kids like most of all. It is also a great way to ask about their feelings and attitude toward a newborn baby. It can even be 15-20 minutes during a day but the quality of this interaction should be as high as possible to show your care and love to older kids.

Involve children in the caring activities

You can surely involve your kids in the caring daily activities with a newborn baby to enhance their interactions and show that new kids are not their enemy but a close brother or sister. When your children will spend more time with a baby, it is also a great benefit for parents as they would have some free time to take a shower and make breakfast, for example. Such practice can unite a family even more than it was before the kid arrived.

Prepare a separate room for a newborn child

The most useful tip in preparing your kids for the arrival of their new sibling is to ensure that a baby will have its own room. There are many cases when families do not have additional room for a new child so they decide to group other kids in one room and present the free room to a new baby. This is a completely wrong direction as children do not understand why they have to leave their room and give it to someone else, no matter who it is. Of course, they will feel jealous, offended, stressed, and disappointed in their parents and newborn siblings. Your older children are under constant stress so please do not empower this feeling.

To sum up

Your main task as a parent is to explain to your older children that the arrival of a new sibling is not a stress or threat to their connection with the parents but it is a great and joyful day when your family becomes bigger and still full of care and love to each other. Also, your older kids should understand that both parents require the support of their children so that they will be near to help and spend several hours with a newborn baby. The period when the baby is so tiny does not last for a long time so each of the family members should adore this time as it will never go back again and you should have no regrets about how you and your family felt during this period of their lives.

Author Bio:

Frank Hamilton has been working as an editor at essay review service Writing Judge and an author at custom writing company Best Writers Online. He is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital marketing and self-education. He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German and English.