I’m 7 months pregnant right now, and I’ve got one other kid who just turned 6. I’m wondering how I’m supposed to do some things, or just wanting to know what’s worked for you.
Car Seat - I always heard that the child is supposed to be in the middle of the back seat because it’s the safest place. Who goes in the middle now? Is it the new baby so I can see it easier, or do I put the older kid in the middle so I don’t have to lean over so far to pull the baby out?
Choking Toys - The 6-year-old has toys with little choke-able parts. I can’t ask her to give them all up just for the new baby. How do I keep the house safe for the little one when the older one doesn’t think twice about walking away from a bunch of beads she’s left on the floor?
I’m curious to hear what other people have done and would love to hear your advice. Thanks!
Car Seat- The baby goes in the middle of the back seat.
Choking Toys- You won’t have to worry about that for a while…at least until the baby is crawling. You’ll have to train the 6 year old not to play near the baby with those toys and to pick up the toys when she’s done.
I’ve got a four and a half year old and a half year old.
Car seats – if you can fit one in the middle and one next to it, go ahead, but most cars can’t accomodate them. It’s more important for them to be properly installed. It’s not that big a deal.
Small toys – you just have to be on top of it. We theoretically have a playroom for the big kid to keep her toys and we watch the baby like a hawk if she’s in there.
Put the 6 year old fully behind the passenger seat and the infant in the center. You will be able to see both of them, and reach the infant more easily. Infants take more care than the 6 year old.
Can’t help you about the toys unless you can give the 6 year old a dedicated playroom and keep the infant out of it unless you are willing to keep the anklebiter in a playpen instead of letting it free range the house.
The best piece of advice my wife and I got when she was expecting our second child:
Babies need lots of attention, but they don’t feel jealous. Your oldest is used to being an only child. In order to soften the transition, it’s okay to “play favorites” toward the oldest for a few months when the baby first arrives. Even-steven comes later when the baby starts to be aware of the family dynamic. A little extra attention toward the oldest right at the beginning helps nip resentment toward the new baby in the bud and smooths the way for a more amicable sibling relationship later on.
Give your six year old an empty toilet paper tube. Have her decorate the outside of it with glitter, markers, paint, shredded bits of colorful paper, whatever.
Explain to her that this is her Special Big Sister Safety Checker Outer. Anything that she can fit into the tube is something the baby could choke on. Her job, as Big Sister, is to make sure you and daddy don’t accidentally leave anything near the baby that he could choke on.
6 year old girls are power hungry little autocrats who love to point out the faults of others. Use it to your advantage!
Our son’s smaller toys were put in his room and downstairs in our large finished basement. His room especially is his and it’s ok if he doesn’t want her in there - his room, his rules, as long as there’s no serious destruction of property. He does clean up regularly in case she manages to get in (she’s 2.5, so she can operate a doorknob).
With respect to the car seat, I’m going to hell here, but we quickly had to move our daughter’s car seat to behind my seat and my son behind the passenger once she was large enough to face forward and voluntarily irritate the crap out of my eldest. You wouldn’t believe how early kids start deliberately pissing each other off. And how frequently they’ll do it if they get a reaction.
Me too. And there weren’t child seats for kids as old as six that I know of back then. If there were, not a child my age that I knew sat in one.
As for things with little pieces, my parents consistently asked me about toys with little parts when they noticed I was done playing. Like “Did you make sure no legos are left on the floor?” and sometimes double checking too, until they trusted me to do it on my own. The secret was that they began that when he was still a tiny baby, so they knew I wouldn’t still be in the habit of leaving stuff where he could get it when he finally became less…inert.
Car seat: never heard that. In Spain, the law says that they must be behind another seat when possible (i.e., the sides are preferrable to the middle). The Kidlets’ seats go behind each parent.
Toys: space. The older sib will be helping you take care of the baby; identifying which toys have small parts and keeping them away from the baby is one of the ways in which big sib does this. Big sib will need a space where these toys can be used without worrying about little sib.
By the way, you should also know that it’s true. The toilet paper tube is as big as the space where the nose and throat meet on a toddler. While you can buy a plastic doohickey for a “choking hazard guide”, many people recommend a toilet paper tube, as it’s cheaper and readily available. So you too, bear in mind that if something can fit in there, it can fit into the baby - but it may not be easy to get out!
Nava, that’s interesting. Here, the recommendation is for the middle seat whenever possible, so side-impact crashes and airbags don’t knock around little bodies and necks that can’t support their heads yet. With multiple kids, the rec is for the smallest (not necessarily the youngest, but the smallest) to go in the middle.
Maybe it’s got to do with the concept of “middle seat”, and therefore with car sizes. Most Spanish cars, even though rated for five occupants, don’t so much have a “middle seat” as a long seat with two proper seats and a third seatbelt in the middle over the bump.
If you have a family van, with three proper seats per row, then that’s a different situation: for starters, each seat in a family van has a full belt.
I think this is probably it. We’ve always had smallish cars (by American standards) that have three seatbelts in the back. However, the middle “seat” is so narrow that if you put an infant carseat there, you couldn’t put a booster seat or an adult on either side. Therefore, our infant seats went directly behind my seat. (They wouldn’t fit behind Mr.Q’s seat. He’s too tall.)
WhyNot, that is an *excellent *description of 6yo girls!
My two boys are six years apart. When they were younger, Older Son was told that his bedroom was his very own special place. His little brother was not allowed to play there. So there, he could have all his Big Kid Toys with the little chokeable parts. It gave the older boy some privacy, and the little guy some safety.
Son was 5 when our daughter was born. They’re now 6.5 and 1.5.
Don’t sweat the car seat thing. The middle is only marginally safer. Also - neither of our cars have anchors for the middle seat anyway. Some people unknowingly use the two inside anchors for the outside seats to put the seat in the middle. This is a big no-no. To properly install a seat in the “middle” there should be 3 sets of anchors or 6 individual anchors - unless you’re using the seatbelt and not the LATCH system.
For the small toys, we told our son that he had to keep his toys in his room, or to always put them away when elsewhere. And we enforce a strict, no baby allowed in big brother’s room policy. Not perfect, but works pretty well.
We also got into a habit with the baby of always telling her to give any little thing she finds on the floor to mom and dad. Sort of odd how this worked out…
When she started crawling/scooting, she would find various little dust bunnies or crumbs in the kitchen, just any little whatever on the floor. Whenever she picked up anything little like that, we always told her to “give it to mommy/daddy.” This was just to keep her from putting dust bunnies in her mouth, etc. We didn’t intend on anything coming of it.
Fast forward to now and she’s like a human vacuum. Any little crumb, speck, piece of sand, dead bug she sees she picks up and brings to us or the trash can now that she’s older and walking. And she was doing this at day-care too because one day the provider mentioned it and how strange she thought it was. She still does it, including toys now too. She’ll pick whatever up and hold it up and show us and we tell her to either put it in the trash or give it to mommy/daddy.
I can’t stress this enough. My boys are 6 years apart and I had to keep reminding myself that even though the Boy was certainly a lot more mature and independent than the Babe, he was NOT to come in 2nd place. This helped me though the times when it would have been easier to leave him to his own devices to tend to the squalling one, but I had to remember that the baby won’t remember having to squall for a few minutes but the big kid would have remembered having to wait around with a bloody, hurting elbow.
Carseats: We were never able to do a carseat in the middle and one on the side so both kids are behind a parent.
Toys: Ditto like others who have the big kid keep toys in their room or a designated area of the house that babies can’t play in.
don’t accidentally leave anything near the baby that he could choke on.