We’re expecting our second baby this fall, and our first will be 4. Most information that I’ve found for introducing new siblings is geared toward much younger kids. Is there data on sibling relationships with larger age gaps, and are there any “best practices” for navigating the transition with an older child?
—Data-Loving Mom
I am biased, but … my kids are almost exactly four years apart and I love it. This was thought to be a common age gap among hunter-gatherer societies, because by 4, children can kind of be on their own. In the modern era, I describe this as the point where a child can carry their own backpack through the airport.
You are asking two somewhat different questions here. The first is about how you generate good sibling relationships, and whether there is data on how to do that (in general, or with larger age gaps). The answer is no, not really.
There is one big thing not to do, which is to pit your kids against each other in a comparison fight. Things like Sally got all A’s in school; why didn’t you? Or even Why can’t you be a good vegetable eater like Peter? This type of comparison doesn’t produce the outcomes you want and pits kids against each other. Counterintuitively, you may prefer them to be together, pitted against you.
This advice holds no matter the age of your children. More broadly, there isn’t anything in the data that suggests that age differences translate very directly to long-term relationships.
To your second question about transitions: Again, we do not have a lot of data, but we can draw on general knowledge about how kids process things as they age. An older child is going to be able to better understand and help with a baby but may also be more aware of the attention they are losing. You can lean into both of those. Kids like to feel helpful, and a child this age can actually help (a little). On the flip side, carving out time for your older child to get attention from both parents is worth planning for.
In the end, the transition is short and the relationships are long — so keep that in mind.
I will leave you with a final piece of personal advice. When my son was born, the thing that I found the hardest was the feeling of having lost time with my daughter. I’m not sure how much — if at all — she felt this. But for me, there was almost a grief at not being there for bedtime every night, for having my attention split. This did pass, but I wish someone had told me to expect it.
Tip: I found this book helpful for thinking through sibling relationships.
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We took a course on introducing siblings to the family (from Early Childhood Matters with Rebecca Walsh) before our second child was born. My kids are 4 years and 1 day apart. One thing that stuck with me was physically showing the older child that love grows. The educator said that love grows with the addition of new family members, and used a match and fire as an example (when you light a match and add more matchsticks the fire grows.) She also had us think back to our own experiences as children and our relationship with siblings. In reflecting on my experience as mostly an only child and my husband’s experience as 1 of 4, we were able to agree on what we wanted to share with our children and what we wanted to change. It was a good exercise. Our kids are now 6 and 10. They decided to share a room rather than have their rooms. They are still little bananas to each other but overall, this was helpful.