Between Siblings

Everyone was excited when I came home from the hospital with our fifth child. Fifth child! You'd think that everyone in the family was used to the noise already, the sharing, and the conflicting schedules. Perhaps this baby would slip right in, into all those welcoming hands. But standing alone on the side of the room was my "baby" - my two-year-old son who had only recently started leaving me in the mornings. It was time to go back to my two favorite experts on children, Penelope Leach and Haim Ginot, to get another dose of what it feels like to be pushed out of babyhood. I remember the first time I read that, to a child, bringing home a new sibling is like a husband telling a wife (or the other way around) that he will soon be bringing another wife home.

I have two children, Ling, 34 months old and Cho, 15 months old. They always want the same thing at the same time and always end up fighting and crying. Could you please advise me how to deal with this problem? A First of all, rest assured that while it is very frustrating for a parent to deal with, it is quite normal for children under the age of three to have difficulty sharing items and waiting for their turn. I would suggest that for starters you make sure that each of your children has some toys or belongings that he or she can call their own. When children have siblings so close in age, it is normal for parents to expect them to share.

Hilorie Baer, MSW During my last pregnancy, I found one book, far and above all others, to be particularly helpful to myself and to my three-year-old while she waited for her baby sister to be born. The Runaway Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown (author of the classic Goodnight Moon,) is about a little bunny who wants to run away. When he announces his intention to his mother, she says, "If you run away, I will run after you. For you are my little bunny." But that doesn't deter little bunny. He says, "If you run after me, I will become a fish in a trout stream and I will swim away from you." Mother bunny replies, "If you become a fish in a trout stream, I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.