How to Prepare Siblings For a Newborn

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Liz Hood on behalf of Expert Village and right now I am going to talk about different things that you need to do to get your household emotionally ready to bring home a new baby. Now, if you happen to have other children, there are many things that you need to go ahead and think about and start doing. One thing that you can do to kind of teach the baby's older siblings about babies is you know go ahead and share like funny stories about how they were like when they were a baby. That will kind of get them used to how much attention a baby might need. That they also got that much attention when they were babies. And it also kind of gets them ready for seeing just how helpless that baby is, so it's not quite that much of a shock. Another thing that you can do is to spend lots of quality time with them, kind of talk with them about how much you love them and how nobody is going to take their place or anything like that. Definitely, definitely try and have as much quality time with them as you can before and after that baby comes home. Another thing that you can do is to you know, have them help out with nursery type stuff and baby stuff, you know, kind of make them feel involved. Don't let them feel left out, like this baby is just going to push them away and take their place and stuff like that. I have heard so many stories about older siblings responding with anger and jealousy to having a new baby home. Like throwing toys up in to the crib and saying that they hate the baby and want you to take it back to the hospital. You know these are all stemming from jealousy most of all so instead of just punishing them and maybe contributing to more behavior like that it's good to just talk with them and find out how they happen to be feeling about it and make sure that you respond to those needs that come out during those kind of talks. "