A book can help with
For the big brother or sister working out where they fit now.
A new baby is wonderful and, for the child who was there first, a great deal to take in. Someone small and loud has appeared and is getting a lot of the attention that used to be theirs, and even a delighted big sibling can feel wobbly, clingy, or cross about it without quite knowing why.
A book lets them rehearse the whole thing, before or after the baby comes. They get to see another child feel muddled and left out and then find their place, which tells them their own mixed-up feelings are normal and allowed. It’s also a lovely calm thing to share when the house has gone noisy.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there.
Getting ready, feeling held
For the littlest ones this is mostly about getting ready, and about still feeling held once the baby’s here. Keep it simple and cuddly.
A gentle rhyming book that explains, in the simplest way, that there’s a baby growing inside Mummy’s tummy, with all the waiting and wondering that goes with it. It’s reassuring and sweet rather than technical, which is just right for a toddler. A good one to read in the months before the baby arrives.
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Za-za’s mum has a new baby, and suddenly everyone’s very busy and Za-za feels rather pushed aside, until she finds her place in the new shape of the family. Cousins draws it warm and bright, and it’s honest about that left-out feeling without ever making it frightening. Toddlers see themselves in Za-za straight away.
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Sharing you, and feeling it
At this age they can feel the pang of sharing you keenly, and a story that names the jealousy kindly does more good than pretending it isn’t there.
Elmore Green is perfectly happy as an only child until a new small person arrives and starts touching his things, and he wants nothing to do with him, until one night he’s rather glad of the company. Child is wonderful on the real, unsentimental feelings of an older sibling, and the warmth creeps up on you. One of the best on the subject.
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Over the seasons of waiting, a little boy asks his mum all his questions about the coming baby, his feelings swinging between excitement and not being sure at all. Two of the finest picture-book makers we’ve had are behind it, and it honours a child’s genuinely mixed feelings rather than tidying them away. Gentle, and quietly funny.
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Sharing the limelight
By this age the arrival is less bewildering, but sharing the limelight can still sting, and the rivalry can rumble on. A story that finds the funny side helps.
A brother and sister, each convinced the other is their parents’ favourite, told from both sides so a child sees how the same house looks through two pairs of eyes. Blume is pitch-perfect on the everyday warfare of siblings, and older children find it very funny and very true. Good for the child who’s decided the little one gets away with everything.
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Ryan Hart spends a whole summer waiting for her baby sister to arrive and quietly worrying that the baby will spoil everything. It is a gentle, everyday sort of book, more about the waiting than the arriving, which is where most of the feeling actually sits. Second in a series, though it reads perfectly well on its own.
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Room for two
An older child usually takes the arrival in their stride on the surface, and still minds a good deal more than they let on. A novel lets them meet someone who felt the same way without having to say any of it out loud.
Raina begged for a sister and then got one who was nothing like the sister she had pictured, and years later the two of them are stuck in a car together for a very long drive. It is honest about resentment that has had time to set, which is the version older children recognise. Graphic novel, so it goes down quickly even with a reluctant reader.
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Anastasia is ten, an only child, and utterly appalled to hear that her parents are having a baby, so she adds them to the list of things she hates in her secret green notebook. Her lists keep shifting all year, and by the time her brother arrives she is the one choosing his name. It was written in 1979 and it shows in places, and her grandmother dies during the story, so that thread is worth knowing about.
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Something to do together
A page to fill in together about all the things a big brother or sister can do that a baby can’t, so the older one feels the pride as well as the change. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
A child who’s just been made a big brother or sister is holding two true things at once: they love the baby, and they wish things were the way they were before. Both are allowed, and a book is a gentle way of saying so.
So make a little room for the older one in the busy early weeks, a story that’s just theirs, and let the grumbles be heard rather than hushed. The wobble almost always settles as the new normal beds in.
These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.