So you’ve prepared your child for his/her new little sibling as we mentioned in our previous post Promoted To Big Brother | Tips For Introducing Baby #2, and now your oldest could care less or may be starting to feel a little bit of jealousy. How do you encourage some much needed sibling and baby bonding?

Our oldest son has been the best big brother his little sister could ask for.  He is always so proud of helping and looking out for her. Because Little A is now mobile (crawling backwards, but it’s a start right!), she needs even more attention.  And that’s where we started to see some sibling jealousy start. So we’ve given him even more big brother tasks that he’s always more than happy to help with and we try to incorporate activities that they can both do, which is pretty limited when one is 7 months and the other 2 years old! Here are some ways that we’ve encouraged bonding with our toddler and baby that have brought them even closer.

Sibling Bonding Tips

Feeding – One of our son’s favorite big brother duties is helping to feed his sister her baby food and of course picking out what kind she should have for the day.

Sharing – When we have play time, I like to encourage him to try to share one of his toy’s that his sister would be able to play with to take turns sharing. This has helped with sharing when we have play dates with other children too!

Singing – Our favorite song is ‘You are my sunshine’ or ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ so chose your favorite and your babies face will light up when they see their big brother/sister sing to them!

Painting – Once our daughter was old enough to sit up on her own, we started with some fun edible baby safe art activities like our Edible Neon Finger Paints.

Pictures – I have thousands of pictures of my kids just like every mom, and I didn’t want my son to feel left out of the picture taking when we did our monthly pictures of our daughter. So we include him in on it too! Except he takes the ‘selfies’ with his sister on my iphone’s camera.

Reading – If your oldest child is old enough to read, they can read to them. Because our son is only 2, he will hold the book for his sister and point out different things on the pages that he likes. This is my favorite activity because I love seeing them together like this!

Play – Try different activities that are great for different age groups so that you can include both of them in. Even if you’re doing tummy time have your other child get down on the floor with them or encourage them to crawl!

Big Sibling Duties – Along with the little things that Jace likes to help out with, the one that he always makes sure to do is to show his sister our good touch and bad touch. Anytime his sister gets a hold of something she shouldn’t, like a Hot Wheels car or some kind of toy she shouldn’t have of her brothers like a choking hazard, he will tell her “No touch sissy” and remove it from her hands!

Help with bed time – Usually Aria is the first to bed at night, so we like to include Jace into her good night routine and have him tuck her in at night and a good night kiss!

Baby Snuggles – Mommy doesn’t have to be the only one snuggling up with baby, give the older sibling some time to snuggle with them too! As long as they are old enough. When Aria was able to hold her head up by herself and Jace understood how fragile she was, was when we started letting him hold her for a few minutes with us there.

Talk – Always the most important! Even if your baby doesn’t understand what you are saying, yet remind both of them how important EACH of them are!

Bath Time – Make bath time a fun activity that the older sibling can help with.

One on One Time – When we put our daughter to bed with the help of our son, we like to spend that time at night before it’s his bed time for just some one on one time. Although you’re needed even more now with two children to raise, it’s so important to give each one that undivided attention with their parents!

Craft For Baby – As we mentioned in our previous post Promoted To Big Brother| Tips For Preparing For Baby #2 make a craft for the baby. Like something for the nursery a picture frame or a drawing.

Article Provided by Jackie Cravener