How to Prepare a Child for a New Sibling: What Pedagogy Really Says
Why “preparing” a child is not what we think
I write this both as a sibling doula and as an early childhood educator, trained in the Reggio Emilia approach and deeply inspired by Montessori pedagogy. Over the years, I’ve noticed a recurring tension in conversations with parents: they want to prepare their child for the arrival of a baby, but they’re unsure what preparation truly means.
Books, scripts, and well-intentioned advice are everywhere. And yet, when you listen closely - in parent circles, in forums, in late-night messages - the same doubts surface again and again. Am I doing enough? Why is my child regressing? Why don’t they seem excited?
Pedagogy offers a useful reframe here. Not because it provides quick solutions, but because it helps us understand what children are actually experiencing when a new sibling arrives.
Emotional safety before emotional readiness
One of the most important contributions to this conversation comes from Donald Winnicott, who introduced the concept of the “holding environment.” His work reminds us that children don’t cope with change through perfect explanations or emotional performance. They cope through the felt sense that the relationship holding them remains intact.
From this perspective, jealousy, ambivalence, or even anger toward a new baby are not signs of failure. They are signs of attachment reorganising itself. Again and again, parents discover - often with relief - that when they stop trying to make their child feel happy about the baby, the emotional intensity softens. The child no longer has to defend their place.
A new baby as an attachment event
This insight aligns closely with attachment theory as developed by John Bowlby. From an attachment lens, a new baby is not perceived as a neutral addition to the family. It is an attachment event.
Regression, clinginess, and boundary-testing are not misbehaviour. They are adaptive strategies. The child is asking, in the only way they can: Are we still safe? Do I still belong?
When this question is met with patience rather than correction, the nervous system settles. When it is met with pressure to “be grown up now,” the stress often increases.
Participation creates belonging
From a Montessori perspective, preparation takes on a very different meaning. Maria Montessori observed that children integrate change through meaningful participation in real life, not through abstract explanation.
When older siblings are invited into the daily rhythms of care - observing, fetching, choosing, participating in small real ways - they are not being trained to help. They are being reassured that they still have a place in the life of the family.
This sense of dignity and usefulness is profoundly regulating. It communicates belonging without words.
The power of honest, respectful language
This emphasis on respect and realism is also central to the work of Emmi Pikler and Magda Gerber. Their approach insists on honest, calm explanations, even for very young children.
In the context of a new sibling, this means saying what will happen without adding emotional expectations. Not “you’ll love the baby,” but “there will be a baby, and things will change.” Children cope better with truth than with pressure, even when the truth is imperfect.
Meaning is built together, not delivered
Reggio Emilia pedagogy, which has profoundly shaped my own practice, adds another essential layer. Influenced by the work of Daniel Stern, it views meaning as something that is co-constructed in relationship.
Children don’t integrate big life changes through lectures or one-off conversations. They integrate them through shared moments: reading together, pausing, wondering aloud, and sometimes saying very little at all.
This is why books about becoming a sibling can be so powerful - and also why they sometimes fail. A book is not an intervention in itself. It becomes meaningful only when it is held within relationship, read slowly, returned to, and allowed to open questions rather than close them.
Why role pressure backfires
Across pedagogical traditions, one caution appears again and again: preparing a child for a new sibling should never mean preparing them to perform a role.
When we lean too heavily on ideas like “big brother” or “big sister,” we risk asking children to give up something essential - their right to still be small, still needy, still held. What children need is not to grow up faster, but to feel that the relationship can stretch without breaking.
A sibling doula’s closing reflection
From my work as a sibling doula, I’ve learned that the most important preparation rarely looks impressive from the outside. It looks like slowing down. It looks like staying emotionally available. It looks like allowing mixed feelings without trying to fix them.
When adults remain present through this transition, children don’t simply accept a new sibling. They keep their sense of belonging — and grow into the new family constellation in their own time. And that, from both a pedagogical and a human perspective, is more than enough.
