Preparing a toddler for a new baby, and the weeks after it arrives

Raising Children, the Australian parenting service run with the Royal Children's Hospital, suggests starting to prepare a child three to four months before the birth, and lists talking, listening, reading books together and plain attention as the preparation. Earlier than that, for a toddler, is mostly waiting.

Time is the difficulty at this age. "In five months" means nothing to a two-year-old. Anchor it to something they can see coming instead: after your birthday, when it is cold, after the summer holiday. A date they can watch approach is far easier to hold than a number.

And tell them before a stranger does. Toddlers overhear everything, and hearing it first from a relative at a party is a worse start than hearing it from you at bathtime.

If a toilet-training push or the move from a cot to a bed is coming anyway, Raising Children's advice is to do it well before the birth or to leave it until afterwards. Not in the same month. A child who is moved out of their cot the week the baby arrives draws the obvious conclusion about where the cot went.

The same applies to a room move, a new nursery or childminder, and anything else that changes the shape of their day. Either give it time to become normal before the baby comes, or wait until the household has settled after.

If they are going to share a room with the baby eventually, that is worth talking about as its own event, not as a side effect of the birth.

One of our sibling stories is built around exactly that moment, when a second small bed arrives in the room and the older child has to make space for it. Take a look

Every person who comes through the door in the first two weeks is there for the baby. They walk past the older child to get to the cot, and the older child notices every single time. This is the part of the whole event that most families do not plan for, and it is also the part that is easiest to fix.

Ask visitors, before they arrive, to say hello to the older child first - properly, down at their height, before they go anywhere near the baby. It costs the visitor ten seconds and it changes the whole visit. Raising Children also suggests asking people who are bringing presents for the baby to bring something small for the older child too.

And have a small present ready that is "from the baby" to the older child, for the first meeting. It is a recognised piece of advice and an effective one: it gives the first encounter a positive shape before anybody has had a chance to feel replaced.

If you are a visitor wondering what to bring, the guide to new-baby gifts makes the case for the present almost nobody gives: the one for the older child. Take a look

Raising Children lists what commonly happens after a new baby arrives: a child who was toilet-trained forgetting it, wanting help to eat or dress, wanting to be rocked to sleep, refusing naps and waking in the night, and sometimes asking for the baby to be sent back. All of it is ordinary.

It is also, read plainly, a child telling you what they think the baby is getting. Wanting to be carried, fed and rocked is a request for the same attention, in the only language a two-year-old has for it. The response that works is usually to give some of it freely rather than to hold the line - being babied for a few minutes on purpose meets the need that the regression is trying to meet.

Raising Children's other advice here is simple and worth taking literally: keep the older child's routines as consistent as you can, praise them when they are gentle with the baby, and tell them how much they have learned and grown since they were a baby themselves.

The single most useful thing is a slot of time each day that belongs to the older child and nobody else - even ten minutes, even while the baby sleeps. Raising Children suggests exactly this, including a special song or a special bedtime book the two of you share.

Make it predictable rather than generous. A reliable ten minutes every evening is worth more than an unpredictable afternoon out, because the child can count on it on the days everything else is about the baby.

Other trusted adults can carry some of this too. A grandparent whose visit is explicitly for the older child is doing something no present can.

Reading books about a new baby is one of the preparation steps Raising Children names, and for a toddler it does two useful things: it rehearses what is coming, and it gives you a way to talk about the baby that is about a character rather than a demand.

A personalised book goes one step further, and this is one of the few moments where that is the right object rather than merely a nice one: the older child is the one being asked to absorb the change, and a story in which they are the hero of it gives them a role instead of a demotion. Our four sibling stories are sorted by the stage they are for - Becoming a Big Sibling before the birth, The Big One Now for the day the baby comes home, The One Who Knows How for the loud weeks after, and Room for Two for sharing a room.

Be honest with yourself about what it cannot do. No book prevents the jealousy, which is a normal part of the adjustment rather than a failure of preparation.

If one of your children needs a great deal more of your time than the other for reasons beyond a new baby, that is a different problem, and it has its own guide. Take a look

Raising Children's answer is reassuring and specific: almost all children need to adjust when a new baby arrives, and a positive sibling relationship usually develops by the time the baby is about fourteen months old.

That is a long time to hold on to in a hard fortnight, but it is worth holding on to. The regression, the requests to send the baby back and the sudden night waking are the adjustment happening, not evidence that it is not.