Having a new baby is a big change. Depending on family dynamics and how much older the sibling(s) are, it might be easier or more difficult to survive the change. Still, integrating him with older siblings will involve some chaos, misunderstandings and big emotions including anger. If you accept and you are all right with this, it is already a big step forward!
I know how excited and happy parents are when a new baby is born – he is so cute, simply perfect! The problem is that siblings, especially younger ones, do not think the same way as parents. In my opinion, how integration works depends on how much parents can understand and emphasize with their older child(ren). Just imagine, you have a best friend to hang out with most of the time and suddenly you see that this friend is with someone else, not leaving time for you. Whether showing it or not, I bet you would feel offended, sad or angry. For children it might be even worse, as parents for them are the only ones so important in their lives. Therefore, to express their emotions, they might treat the baby as an intruder, as someone who took their rightful place, who took all the attention of their parents. Now, because of that baby, life has become much worse with no real presence of, especially, mom. Yes, this transition for siblings is difficult to navigate and so it is just natural for them to express negative feelings to the baby “When will you take him back?” “I hate him” or even “Can we sell him?”.
It might be tempting to say “stop” to certain inappropriate behaviour, but it is more useful to address the belief of an older child instead. When you hear yourself saying, “stop, you cannot talk like this” to the child’s question “Can we sell him?”, stop. Try to emphasize with your child: “It is really difficult for us to be all together, isn’t?” or “You really miss the time when you had all your mom’s attention for yourself” or something similar, depending on how you think your child is feeling.
Instead of explaining, turn to your older child’s needs
For us, it is obvious that a baby needs a lot of attention to feed him, to get to sleep. An older child is often not yet in that place to think about the baby or any other human being. It is natural for us to explain the obvious in a logical way, but the older child needs to know that we still care about him, that he is not in the last place for us. Instead of explaining “I cannot be with you because I have to feed the baby” it is useful to turn the perspective a bit toward the older sibling “I will be with you as soon as I can” because the older child’s concern is when you will be with him. Instead of “I cannot play with you because I am going to get the baby to sleep” (he is still small you know, he needs help), you can say “When baby falls asleep, we will play together for 15 min.” You can even twist a conversation so that the older child gets some attention. The baby will not get insulted if you do not mention him in the talk, but the older sibling will be glad to hear you saying to your guests, “this is the older brother, he helps me a lot”. In general, it is helpful to remember an older sibling’s needs in all situations.
Don’t compare the children
When the baby is born, all the guidelines to deal with siblings are useful, such as do not compare the children; involve the older sibling in whatever you are doing; if possible, leave the solving of the problem to siblings themselves. Welcoming a new baby is also a very special occasion which could be celebrated. Older children, for example, could prepare gifts for their new sibling. Sometimes, especially when the transition is more difficult, it helps to sit down and look at the pictures of the older sibling being the baby and remember how it was for him, how, as the baby, he could not manage a lot of things but now he knows so much more than the baby – he can talk and express himself, he can walk, he can even help his mum. What a big difference – maybe being a baby is not as fun, as you cannot do a lot of things. Maybe as an older sibling you can and want to take some responsibility! The author of Positive Discipline has a nice story to tell older siblings about the abundant love for all children, which you can tell your older child(ren) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJDvujaPEKY
Further reading
Markham, Laura (2015). Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings.
By Aiste Grubliauskiene, PhD, Clinical Psychologist, Psychotherapist Candidate
This article was first published in the 2025 summer edition of the BCT’s Small Talk magazine.
