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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. How would we feel if we were told,
"I love you so much that I just had to have another wife"
or "I really need my helpful old wife to help me look after
my new one."
This helped give me the patience
during those very hard first months of adapting to a new baby
in the house. I tried extra hard to concentrate on the child who
had to be forced out of his position as the youngest of the gang.
Penelope Leach, in her books, has the ability to speak to me in
the place of the child who can't express himself.
Haim Ginot, on the other hand, gives
me practical advice on how to handle day to day situations. A
child needs help in expressing her feelings and in receiving the
affirmation that we understand her feelings. Soon after reading
this, my four-year-old son ran inside, upset about something that
was happening outside. I couldn't make out his story and just
said "Boy, that made you really angry, didn't it?" He
stopped yelling, looked at me and gave a loud "yeah."
He then went back outside happily.
It doesn't work half as easily most
of the time, but it does help me to stop whatever I am doing,
listen to my two-year-old "big boy," and help him get
over his frustrations.
When he starts to get upset when
I begin to nurse the baby, I tell him that I know he would like
me to hold him. Being that I can't do that, I would very much
like to read him a story.
There will always be competition
among the ranks in the family, but there also has to be acceptance.
It is always a challenge, but with patience and over time, it
will be hard for kids to remember a time when the baby wasn't
there ....thank goodness!
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