Prepare Your Child for a Sibling With a Baby Doll
Like many mothers pregnant with their second child, I wondered how I could love another child as much as my first. I watched my three-year-old son jump around the room as if there were springs in the floor. He drove toy trucks over furniture and knocked them together, launching tiny metal planes, making loud roaring jet sounds. Love filled my chest as I watched his antics, but along with this warm, fuzzy feeling came … anxiety. Because the holy cow he was rude .
I would have dealt with love, of course, but we had a more pressing problem: how the hell was I going to keep my first child safe from accidentally mutilating my newborn? My son was very active, noisy and loved to smash things together and build towers for the simple joy of knocking them down. Meekness was not a concept that he could comprehend, and as an only child at the time, it was not something that he needed to comprehend.
Teaching meekness
How to teach a small child to be gentle? I thought – as with any other thing we want to learn – practice is best. So, around the middle of my pregnancy, I bought my son a doll. I told him that this would be his child. I told him that children are very gentle, so we are going to practice together how to take proper care of this child.
My son knew I had a baby growing in my belly, so his curiosity about it quickly fueled his thought that he had a baby of his own to take care of.
Our first communication made me happy that I decided to use the doll as a practice, because the first thing my son did was try to land a toy plane on the doll’s head. This gave me the opportunity to talk about the fact that when we touch and hold the baby, we should keep our hard toys aside. I explained to him about the weak spot in the child’s head and how we need to keep an eye on it. His eyes widened and I saw a light bulb go on in his head. Playing with a baby will be very, very different from how he is used to playing.
We practiced whispering next to the doll and placing it gently on the ground. We talked about how important it is to support a child’s head. We changed the imitation diapers and gave them imitation bottles. It didn’t take long for my son to soften his rough play as we pretended to be with our doll.
Pay
A few months later, when my daughter was born, my son already had all the necessary information on how to behave in a hospital room, and no one had to lecture or warn him. My normally cheerful baby slowly crept into the room with a shy smile on his face, eager to gently stroke the soft head of his new sister. He, too, held her, sitting motionless and smiling lovingly into her newborn face.
I’m sure my son would love his little sister even if I never bought him this doll, but I think giving him this safe practice beforehand made a huge difference. He not only taught my son to behave physically, but also taught him to be a loving guardian. He felt immense pride when he felt he was doing his part in caring for this tiny new family member, and that caring part of him survived. He is almost 13 and she is 9, and to this day he still cares about his little sister.