New baby + your older child

The arrival of a sibling reshuffles the emotional economy of the household. For the older child, it is the first time the parent they have been at the centre of is also someone else's parent. That is not a small thing. Most children move through it with support. Some need more.

What to expect, by age

Under 2

The toddler does not understand the baby conceptually, but does feel the shift in attention. Expect clinginess, changes in eating or sleeping, and a return to earlier behaviours — bottles, thumb-sucking, wanting to be carried. This is normal. Call it regression if you like, but it is better understood as your older child reassuring themselves of their place.

2 to 4

Big feelings, often swinging between affection and aggression toward the baby within a single day. The language for the feelings is still limited, which means the feelings come out through the body. Hitting the baby, pinching, hugs that are too tight. These are communication, not character.

4 to 7

Cognitively ready to understand the baby as a person. Often remarkably helpful one week and wildly jealous the next. Language is developed enough to say 'I don't like it when the baby cries all night.' Listen to that sentence. It is correct.

7 and up

Usually more measured — and occasionally caretaking in a way that is not ideal. Older siblings sometimes lose their childhood into responsibility. Watch for the child who becomes unexpectedly 'good' the moment the baby arrives; that performance is often a stress response, not maturity.

Preparing before the baby arrives

1. 1Tell them early, but not too early. Roughly half-way through the pregnancy is developmentally right for most ages — before it is visible, they are too young to understand. After it is visible, they should hear it from you first.
2. 2Read books together. The Australian library has good ones — Jane Godwin's 'Our Baby' for younger siblings, Mem Fox's books for the older child's perspective.
3. 3Walk them through what it will look like — the car seat being installed, the cot being set up, the hospital stay, who will be at home with them.
4. 4Give them a small job before birth: picking the baby's first outfit, choosing the welcome-home teddy, being in charge of making sure the baby gets a specific book.
5. 5Protect one or two anchors of their pre-baby life. Saturday morning pancakes. Their bedtime routine. Not everything should change.

The first six weeks

• Expect the acute phase. The first few weeks are not representative. Exhaustion, visitors, and novelty distort things. Judge the relationship at three months, not three weeks.
• Protect fifteen minutes a day, one-on-one, with the older child. Not when they are tired and you are spent. Ideally when they choose the activity.
• Let them be ambivalent. A child who says 'I wish we could send the baby back' is telling the truth of the moment. Reassure. Do not moralise.
• Avoid the phrase 'big boy / big girl now.' The older sibling has just become the unwitting senior in a system they did not ask for. Treat them as the same age they are.
• Delegate affection. If the baby is on you, let other adults hold the older sibling. The body needs the swap.

When to pay closer attention

The pattern that deserves a closer look is distress that is worsening rather than settling past three months, or behaviours that are qualitatively different from anything you saw before.

• Aggression toward the baby that is escalating rather than easing. Persistent rough handling despite redirection.
• Self-harm — head-banging, biting themselves, deliberate hurting.
• Regression sustained beyond three months and deepening rather than lifting.
• A child who has become eerily quiet, compliant, and absent. The absent child can be harder to see than the acting-out child; both are signals.
• Sleep or eating changes that do not resolve, or signs of sustained anxiety — stomach aches, tics, re-emerging separation distress.

The GP Mental Health Care Plan covers six psychology sessions per calendar year. For a sibling transition that has not settled by the three-month mark, a few sessions with a child psychologist is a well-placed intervention.

The new-baby transition is one of the formative experiences of early childhood, and the skills your older child learns through it — sharing attention, tolerating dethronement, loving someone smaller than them — are durable skills. Most families land it. The ones who struggle longest are usually the ones who felt they had to do it alone.