When the New Baby Arrives

The visitors arrive with flowers for the baby and something small in a bag for the older one. The older one is not fooled by the bag. Something enormous has happened, it happened to them, and nobody has asked how they are.

We talk about a new baby as an addition. For a firstborn it is closer to a restructuring. The person who was the whole reason the household existed has been asked, at three or five or eight, to share the two adults who form the centre of their world — with someone who cannot even be resented properly, because everyone keeps saying how lovely they are.

What the behaviour is actually saying

Regression is the most common and most misread response. A toilet-trained child has accidents. A confident sleeper needs company again. Words shrink, baby voices appear, a fork is suddenly impossible. This is not spite. It is a hypothesis being tested: babies get held constantly, so perhaps being a baby is how you get held.

Before the birth

1. 01
   Move the big changes early

   New bedroom, new nursery, dropping a dummy, starting school — do them two or three months before the birth, or several months after. Never in the same fortnight.

2. 02
   Be honest about newborns

   'She will cry a lot, sleep a lot, and won't play with you for a long time.' Children who are promised a playmate feel cheated on day four.

3. 03
   Name the hard part out loud

   'There will be times you wish she wasn't here. That's allowed. You can tell me and I won't be cross.' Permission given in advance prevents behaviour later.

4. 04
   Decide who holds the older child

   In the first fortnight, one adult's main job is the firstborn. Agree this before anyone is exhausted and nobody is negotiating at 3am.

The first twelve weeks at home

• Feed times become story times — a book on your knee turns exclusion into inclusion.
• Photographs on the wall of the older child as a baby, being held exactly the same way.
• Visitors briefed to greet the older child first. It costs nothing and lands enormously.
• A basket of activities that only appears during feeds, retired the rest of the day.
• Physical safety supervised without commentary — proximity, not accusation.

If the older child is hurting the baby

Grabbing, pinching and squeezing frighten parents into harsh responses. Keep it simple: block the hand, stay physically close, and address the need rather than prosecuting the act. 'I won't let you hurt her. Come here — you needed me and I was busy.' Punishment teaches the child that the baby's arrival made them bad. Supervision teaches them that they are still held.

Most families find the fog lifts somewhere around the fourth or fifth month. Not because the older child stopped minding, but because they gathered enough evidence that the thing they feared — that they had been demoted — was not true.