As it got closer to my due date, my husband and I couldn't help but wonder... "How is Danielle (our current toddler, 17 months) going to handle having a little sister?" She plays well with her cousins, she shares, and she even tries to cheer them up if they cry. We thought, would she be the same way if her cousins were here 24/7? We had no idea and we kept wondering, right up until the miracle happened.
On Feb 24th, we had our second child. When we first brought her home, all she did was slept and ate, so our toddler didn't really notice her. After a few weeks, when the newborn required more attention, our toddler really started to notice. She would do things like trying to move the baby out of our arms while we held her, climbing up the side of the crib to get in, stealing the pacifier, bottle and other things that implied she still wanted to be the only baby.
We figured that the root of her new behavior was wanting more attention then we could give her at the time. We tried tons of methods that we read in books and online, but none of them worked. We finally decided that we would have to think like a toddler in order to figure this out. My husband and I both knew what it felt like to have to share your parent’s attention after being an only child for so long, so we tried things that would have cheered us up.
The first thing we tried was holding the newborn upright in a comfortable position, taking her hands, and making her play peek-a-boo with our toddler. That worked great. Our toddler immediately began to warm up to our newborn.
The next thing we did was letting our newborn pretend to eat our toddler. We would take our toddler's hand and put it near the newborn. We would then have the newborn lean forward and I would make the sound, "Yum, yum, yum!" Our toddler thought it was the funniest thing in the world.
After playing a few safe games involving both of them, things are back to normal. She brings the baby's bottle when she cries, she dances and makes noise to try to calm her down, and she even whispers when the baby is asleep.
As it got closer to my due date, my husband and I couldn't help but wonder... "How is Danielle (our current toddler, 17 months) going to handle having a little sister?" She plays well with her cousins, she shares, and she even tries to cheer them up if they cry. We thought, would she be the same way if her cousins were here 24/7? We had no idea and we kept wondering, right up until the miracle happened.
On Feb 24th, we had our second child. When we first brought her home, all she did was slept and ate, so our toddler didn't really notice her. After a few weeks, when the newborn required more attention, our toddler really started to notice. She would do things like trying to move the baby out of our arms while we held her, climbing up the side of the crib to get in, stealing the pacifier, bottle and other things that implied she still wanted to be the only baby.
We figured that the root of her new behavior was wanting more attention then we could give her at the time. We tried tons of methods that we read in books and online, but none of them worked. We finally decided that we would have to think like a toddler in order to figure this out. My husband and I both knew what it felt like to have to share your parent’s attention after being an only child for so long, so we tried things that would have cheered us up.
The first thing we tried was holding the newborn upright in a comfortable position, taking her hands, and making her play peek-a-boo with our toddler. That worked great. Our toddler immediately began to warm up to our newborn.
The next thing we did was letting our newborn pretend to eat our toddler. We would take our toddler's hand and put it near the newborn. We would then have the newborn lean forward and I would make the sound, "Yum, yum, yum!" Our toddler thought it was the funniest thing in the world.
After playing a few safe games involving both of them, things are back to normal. She brings the baby's bottle when she cries, she dances and makes noise to try to calm her down, and she even whispers when the baby is asleep.
