When there’s a new baby in the family, older siblings frequently—though not immediately—regress and act out as a way to telling parents how they feel about this new addition. Sometimes the feelings are expected—like jealousy—but often parents are surprised at the range, depth, and complexity of feelings that the older brother or sister might have.
This post takes a deep dive into what older siblings experience so that parents have more tools to help their child.
Pregnancy and setting the stage
The many months of pregnancy give families time to prepare for the baby, and this includes the baby’s older sibling, though in truth, most young kids have no idea what’s coming their way! If the child is under five, she’s going to have a lot of fantasies about the baby and how life will be. Unless she already has siblings, she can’t anticipate how thoroughly her life will change—and not necessarily in ways that she wants.
The pregnancy is a time to encourage your child to voice all her various feelings about how life will look when the baby arrives. It’s also a time for parents to prepare their child for the realities of having a newborn. It can be helpful to review old photos or family movies of her infancy so that your child can recognize just how much attention she needed from her parents. This can be a gentle reminder and reality check that the new baby will take a lot of the parents’ time and attention.
The goal here is to set up reasonable expectations for the newborn’s arrival without creating anxiety in the child.
Jealousy, of course
An older sibling’s excitement at the baby’s arrival usually lasts only a few weeks. The reality quickly sets in that this baby is a ton of work. Suddenly, the parents are exhausted, perhaps cranky, and even if they aren’t, certainly their time is absorbed by the new baby; the older sibling now feels jealous.
This jealousy is universal. Any child who isn’t jealous is simply doing a good job at hiding it from the family—and herself.
After all, older siblings have so much to be jealous about. Their world has been shaken up and re-ordered so that someone else is the primary focus of their parents’ attention and efforts. In their view, it’s simply unfair. All this excitement and preparing for the baby was a complete scam!
Anger, but at whom?
Just as all older siblings are jealous, they are also angry. They didn’t sign up for this. If they’d known the truth, they never would have agreed or approved of a baby. It doesn’t matter that the parents promise her that in time she can play more with the baby, or that she and the baby will become best friends. Kids live in the present, and right now, the present sucks.
But if she’s angry, where can she voice the anger? Can she allow herself to be angry at her parents? That’s risky because kids don’t want to be angry at parents and feel a disruption in their relationship. And they don’t want to risk that the parent will be angry back. Certainly, there’s good reasons to be angry at the baby, and many siblings will vent this anger, whether it’s overt (i.e. pinching the baby) or hidden (i.e. literally smothering her sibling with hugs and kisses).
There’s a danger here. If parents make it clear that their child’s anger is unacceptable and intolerable, she will direct her anger at herself. She will tell herself that she is a bad kid for having so much unacceptable anger towards the innocent, sweet, delightful baby. Her internalized anger can easily become depression or form a lasting narrative that she’s a bad person.
Anger is the tip of the iceberg
If your child is under five, expect not just anger but murderous rage!
She’ll want you to take the baby back to the hospital and leave it there, or she’ll want you to throw the baby in the garbage—or out the window!
This is normal, and it’s not murder per se that she’s really after. She just wants the baby to disappear—forever.
But there’s a catch here: she will assume that if she has these enormous, extreme, aggressive desires to destroy the baby, her parents will also have these desires. Except that their rage will be directed at her for wanting to destroy the thing they love. And because they are grownups, they have the power to do it!
In this case, it’s helpful for parents to anticipate and speak to their child’s jealousy, rage, and desire to get rid of the baby. In doing so, it gives permission for the child to express her feelings without fear of retribution. It tells her that it’s okay to have these intense feelings, and that her parents can tolerate them as they help her manage the feelings.
In doing so, parents can greatly reduce an older sibling’s acting out.
When there’s an absence of anger
Sometimes older siblings are very good at hiding their negative feelings—their rage, sadness, jealousy, etc.—from the family and from themselves. In fact, they will often act the exact opposite of their true feelings, displaying boundless love and affection for the new baby. While this feels great for the parents (and the baby), it’s not healthy for the older sibling. His anger eventually comes out, often explosively, and often directed towards himself.
If your older child’s behavior seems too good to be true, if he’s such an amazing, loving big brother who dotes on his younger sibling, ask yourself if he’s masking his true feelings. It will be important for you to make space for his negatives feelings so that they don’t eat at him from the inside. (For more on this, check out the post, “An Overlooked Tool to Understanding Kids: Their Exaggerated Behaviors.”)
Regression
Parents now recognize and expect their older child to regress when a baby is brought into the family. “But what’s with that?” one parent once asked me. “Why regress? Why unlearn everything she was so proud to have accomplished?”
A great question, and the answer might seem surprisingly simple, yet it makes sense: babies get tons of attention and love; therefore, becoming a baby again will bring all these good things back!
With this in mind, parents can speak to their child’s regression. Many parents tell their child something like, “You know how to use the potty, you’ve been doing it for six months. You’re a big kid, right? And I’d really like you to act like one.”
What the parent says is all true, but it doesn’t speak directly to the problem, which is an emotional one, not an intellectual one. Some parents try to sell their older child on how great it is to be big, but this, too, avoids the issue.
Instead, the parent might say, “I know you got some mixed feelings. You like being a big kid and doing things yourself. But now, seeing me do everything for the baby, you wish you could be a baby again and get completely taken care of. I bet it feels a little sad not to be a baby anymore. But my love for you hasn’t changed one bit.”
Notice that the parent isn’t telling the child what to do—or stop doing. The parent is only observing and naming the emotion. This is sufficient. (For more on this, see the post, “Naming Emotions: a Key Part of Successful Parenting.”)
There’s never enough to go around
Siblings normally compete with each other, but under it all, they’re often really competing for the parent’s love and attention.
Most children feel that there’s never quite enough love to go around. They want to be the favorite child, the one who is most special. There’s nothing wrong with this wish, but parents need to remind their kids that their love is endless and there always is enough love to go around—there just isn’t endless time.
Again, it comes back to voicing how a child feels to get those feelings into the open where a child can see them and start managing them. In this case, it’s voicing how a child feels sad that they aren’t getting enough time and attention. (Again, check out the post, “Naming Emotion: A Key Part of Successful Parenting.”)
In the end, many families are just trying to get through the first year of now having two kids. It’s always going to be an intense, difficult (but hopefully magical) time. You’ll get plenty of opportunities to help your older child grapple with having a sibling and the conflicting feelings this creates in her. The more space she has for recognizing and accepting her negative feelings, the more she’ll be able to manage them—and she’ll probably find it easier to love her sibling, too.
(For a child’s surprising response to his new sibling, check out the very short story, “Revenge.”)
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