Tag Archives: sibling jealousy

Preparing an Only Child for a New Baby

For the majority of parents, teaching an only child, or first born child, how to handle a new baby is something that we have to go through. This is something that I am going to have to go through in a couple of months as I have a 4 ½ year old son and will be delivering another baby boy at the first of August. I am starting to see that my son will have quite a bit of adjusting to do when the new little guy arrives as he’s not used to younger children following him around and messing with “his” toys. As a result, I have been doing a lot of research and have started to prepare my son for the arrival of his baby brother.

I know that I’m not the only woman out there who is about to go through this and so I thought you may find it beneficial to read a few tips for how to prepare your only child for a new baby sibling. Below are some of the ideas I have found and began to implement.

Get the child involved as soon as possible. Many experts believe that it’s best to get your first-born child involved in the pregnancy as soon as possible. For me, that was after I was already past the 12 week mark. My son is one who doesn’t like surprises, so telling him early was something we needed to do. To help him get excited about the new baby, we made sure that we included him in on the name-choosing process. We allowed our son to pick out the middle name for his brother. We’ve also taken him to several stores with us and let him pick out some little boy’s outfits for the baby as well as…