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Friday, January 26, 2007

Breaking the News

So, people often ask me, as if I knew what I was doing, if I have discussed the impending sibling with Felix. Not really. Not so much. There was an amusing moment during dinner once when I floated the topic, but Felix blinked and said "Baby? Eat? EAT BABY!"

At that point the conversation was getting too interesting and there was no point in continuing in the original vein.

Felix won't be too much more than 26 months old when the presumed sibling shows, and his current ability to anticipate anything doesn't appear to extend much more than 24 hours (in that he can remember if you promised him dumplings for lunch). So are there game plans or does one just sort of slip the new kid into the house and hope to work around things more or less the way one did with introducing the first kid to the terrier?

I'm not being cavalier. I just want to be practical and effective.

posted by Elise at 8:38 AM

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67 Comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you need to just go with the terrier option. In my experience (and from what I've seen with my friends' kids), if the kid is younger than 3 1/2 or so, he's just not going to understand the idea of a new baby coming to live with the family. It doesn't matter how smart he is, or even if there are older siblings around who do understand--they just don't comprehend until the baby actually comes home. (And maybe not even then--my cousin thought her 22-month-old was adjusting nicely until his new brother was about a week old and he asked when "that baby" was going home.)

1/28/2007 12:20 PM

Elise said...

Yep! I think the "When is that kid going home?" question is extremely common -- so common that the people I know who dodged it either had their kids incredibly widely spaced apart or had them so close together that the older one couldn't yet speak.

1/28/2007 7:51 PM

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1/29/2007 2:57 AM

Anonymous said...

My daughter was 30 months old when her new sister arrived, and she didn't really understand what was happening until the baby came home. Once home, we just kept calling her "your sister" and "our new baby" and she at least got the idea that the baby was here for the long haul.

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1/30/2007 12:39 AM

Anonymous said...

There is just under a 3-year age gap with my niece and nephew and for the first 6 weeks or so of the new baby my niece denied all knowledge of him. If you asked her "Who's that baby?" or "What's his name" she'd say "I don't know", even though she did. She went through a naked phase and became a bit withdrawn. However, she soon turned a corner and even while she was still publicly denying that the baby had anything to do with her she made me promise not to take him home with me. Now she's 4 and he's 14 months, and she only vaguely remembers, if pressed, that he was once in Mommy's tummy and not always here. I guess with a smaller gap the memory of the pre-baby time will fade even faster.

1/30/2007 2:28 AM

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1/30/2007 4:53 AM

Elise said...

I find this really fascinating. I know that I was quite odd about my sibling, though I was somewhat older than Felix is when that happened, and I tried to take charge of the whole naming process - when denied I just went ahead and used the name I liked for quite a while until I finally gave up.

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Anonymous said...

I read somewhere that for a kid about to get a new brother or sister, it's akin to your spouse saying to you, "I love you so much, I'm going to bring home another person just like you, except younger and cuter." :)

Our former newborn is now almost 1, and madly in love with her big sister, so that helped a lot in terms of our eldest coming to grips with the new family situation.

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