Managing Sibling Rivalry

You’ve been looking forward to this day- the excitement of welcoming a new baby into the family. You’ve been dreaming of watching your older child playing tenderly with the younger one; everything seems completely idyllic… until your elder child suddenly bites the baby and screams at you: “I hate you; you don’t love me anymore”. 

Unfortunately, this is the reality of welcoming a new sibling into the home for many families. However, with a bit of careful planning, some of this can be avoided.

Of course, when we have a newborn in the house, everything revolves around them. They are extremely time consuming, with their seemingly endless cycles of feeding, changing, putting to sleep (and repeat…).  Without intending to, we can often leave the older child feeling neglected and less important than before the baby arrived. This article shares a few major strategies for managing sibling rivalry and jealousies.

Fostering Good Sibling Relationships

Before The New Baby Arrives:

There are many books designed to help you explore the topic of a new sibling arriving, and what that means for your older child.

Books exploring what it means to be an older sibling

You can start reading these books together with your child when you reach the second or early third trimester. Allow your child to “touch” the baby, and feel the baby move in your tummy. You can also encourage your child to talk to their new baby through your tummy, and give the baby kisses.

Around the time of the birth, many people arrange a “gift exchange”. The idea is that when your older child visits the new baby for the first time, whether that is in the hospital or in your bedroom at home, the two children “exchange” gifts.  This helps to ensure that the first meeting is a happy and exciting one for your older child, and reminds your older child that they are precious to you as well.

The First Few Months:

Involve your older child in the care of your baby- and praise them for helping. Encourage them to pass you the diaper or cream when you are changing your baby, or pass you a towel when bathing the baby. Tell them what a great big brother or sister they are, and how proud you are of them- and watch them glow.

They also need Mommy time, too. So, no matter how time consuming and exhausting the new baby is, remind yourself to give your older child some special time each day. I usually recommend the half hour just before their afternoon nap, and the half hour just before their bedtime as the times older children most need their Mommy. Try to put your baby down for this time, and go into another room to spend some quality time together. Routines are useful for predicting the times you can dedicate to this; you may need to stagger bedtimes and change the older child’s routine to accommodate this.

Special time with Daddy is important too, but older siblings tend to give Mommy a much harder time than Daddy. This is perhaps because she is often the one who is  spending more time with the new baby (and consequently less time with them).

Good activities to do together are cuddling, reading books, tickle time, and anything else you both enjoyed doing together before the baby arrived.

The Big Kid Years:

Although the obvious jealousies of the earlier years don’t usually continue into the “big kid” years, often new challenges emerge as your children grow older. Jealousy and rivalry may present as aggression towards their siblings, or in your child becoming more quiet and withdrawn.

As your children develop their own tastes and preferences, pursuits and interests, it becomes more important to spend quality time with them, getting to know them as they transition into the adults they will one day become. It is important to continue to remind each child that they are special in their own right.

We started our married life with regular “date-nights”. When our children were tiny, we continued with our “date- nights”, with the generous help of grandparents to babysit. As our children became older, we saw the need to spend quality time with each of them as individuals, and kid “date-night” was born.

We still have “date-night” every Saturday evening, but now the first Saturday of the month belongs to our oldest boy; he gets some say in the venue and activities- bowling is a favourite. The second belongs to our middle child, who  loves seafood and playing at outdoor jungle gyms. The third belongs to our little girl, who gets “date-night” much younger than our boys did and just loves having her parents’ undivided attention (a rarity for a third child). The fourth Saturday of the month still belongs to Mommy and Daddy!

Feel free to comment on what worked for you, or what challenges you faced.

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