Taking the ‘R i v a l’ Out of New Arrival : Sibling Preparedness Courses Prove Effective
Megan Durst, 2 1/2, was exhibiting classic signs of sibling rivalry, although the new baby expected in her family won’t be born until next year.
Like four other children enrolled in a recent sibling preparedness class at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, Megan was given a sheet of colored paper, some stickers and crayons to create a card for the new baby. She was asked to write, or have a parent write, the words Dear Baby, followed perhaps by something along the the lines of “I can’t wait for you to be born.” “Megan, sweetie,” her father Steve Durst prodded, “do you want to say ‘Dear Baby’ on the card?”
“Oh, no!” she shot back, eventually compromising and agreeing to tell the baby, “I like Mickey Mouse.”
Megan was hardly alone in her indifference toward the child already occupying much of her parents’ attention. Other kids in the class--designed to let children know that it’s normal and OK for them to feel angry and jealous when a new baby is born--were having similar difficulties.
Beau’s New Puppy
Several of the children couldn’t think of anything they wanted to say to the strange, invisible creatures allegedly living inside their mothers’ bellies. Eight-year-old Beau Bright, for instance, claimed he didn’t know what to tell his yet-to-be-born sister. Finally, he wrote, “Dear Isabelle, You half (sic) to meat (sic) my new puppy. Love, Beau.”
Welcome to child-rearing in the late ‘80s, a time when many youngsters learn how to swim before they can walk, how to read before they can talk and how to be a sibling before their new baby brother or sister is even born.
Sibling preparedness classes--or sibling tours as they’re sometimes called--are becoming commonplace at hospitals. According to the nurses, volunteers and assorted health educators who teach them, the classes began showing up in growing numbers in the early part of the decade as hospitals increasingly began allowing young children to visit their mothers after the birth of a baby.
The classes and tours typically provide children with opportunities to view newborns through the hospital’s nursery window, to see films or slide shows on what type of feelings older children are likely to experience when a new brother or sister is born, to inspect the type of room their mothers will be staying in, to learn the correct way to hold and diaper a newborn (practiced with a doll or teddy bear) and to participate in small discussion groups in which they can talk about their fears and apprehensions.
Depending on the hospital, the classes may be given free of charge or for a fee, once a month or several times a month. They are usually open to children from ages 2 to 12. The St. John’s class, for example, costs $25 and is open to anyone, including families not delivering at the hospital. At Humana Hospital West Hills in the San Fernando Valley, the class is free and open to anyone.
While there is no known research on the effectiveness of the classes, their teachers frequently report marked results.
“It’s very positive,” says Nancy Dunne, the perinatal coordinator at Humana. “A lot of the time we don’t see the total end results of it (the sibling orientation class). But the children who come to the hospital to visit are not afraid to reach out and touch the baby.
“Many times a child of 2 or 3 will reach out and try to slap the child or push it away from their mother. We’ve never had a case of the child doing that after going through the orientation.”
In preparation for writing the book, “Raising Cain: How to Help Your Children Achieve a Happy Sibling Relationship,” authors Herbert S. Strean and Lucy Freeman visited some sibling preparation classes at hospitals.
Advance Preparation
“I think they’re an excellent idea because they prepare the child to deal with the sibling in advance,” says Strean, a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City who’s had parents bring him children “because they’ve hit a new baby over the head with a hammer.”
“I think every child in the world wants to be the most important,” he adds. “No child 100% welcomes a sibling. They’re always worried about how much affection they’re going to lose. Sometimes it’s intense, sometimes its mild, but the concern is always there.”
To Strean, a sibling tour or class is a clear way to demonstrate that a child is loved and valued. “It says, ‘You, too, are important and we care about you.’ When you say to youngsters who are worried about losing their stature, ‘Look how important you are. We’re gong to take you around,’ you’re saying a lot.”
In the sibling orientation program at Humana--which has been in operation for about three years, with Dunne as teacher for two years and supervisor for about a year--newborns in the nursery are naked. “So there’s usually a lot of questions about why the babies don’t have any clothes on,” Dunne says of the hour to hour-and-15-minute class. “And when we have them actually diaper the dolls and teddy bears, it’s hysterical. . . .
Willing--and Otherwise
“We’ve had a lot of fun times, needless to say. When I used to teach it, I’d get the kids talking about what ways they’re going to help Mommy when they go home. . . . Some kids say they’re going to take out the trash and cook the meals and make the beds. . . . Then you go to the other end of the scale and you get the kids who say ‘I’m not going to help at all.’ And the ones who say, ‘I’ll help feed the baby but I’m not going to diaper the baby because the baby poops in its pants.’ ”
In Dunne’s view, the fact that the child has had an opportunity to express feelings and become familiar with the hospital environment pays high dividends: “When the children come to the hospital (after the birth), they feel very comfortable in the (maternity) unit. They’re not afraid of Mom being there. It certainly helps the separation of the child from the mother when the children know that somebody’s going to take good care of her.”
Carol Osborne, a Northridge Hospital volunteer who gave a one-hour sibling preparation class from 1985 through most of 1987, until another volunteer took over, observes that the classes have been extremely well received by parents, who typically accompany their children to the classes. (Although the free classes at Northridge are intended for families delivering there, Osborne says no one is turned away.)
Positive Feedback
“We’ve had a lot of positive feedback from the mothers. A lot of times it’s right after the tour is over,” she says. “One mother brought her daughter back a second time.”
At Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, free half-hour tours for siblings have been offered for about two years, according to Patsy Jones, clinical nurse specialist for parent/child health.
“It’s a fun tour to give,” Jones says of the class, which is offered exclusively for families delivering at Cedars. “The children really enjoy learning how to take care of the new baby. One little boy actually asked if his mom was going to ‘get the knife’ because he’d heard about Caesarean sections,” says Jones. “None of the things we expected to come up have come up. There have been no questions about sex education or how babies are born.”
Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish give six-hour sibling workshops around the country for adults still working out problems with brothers or sisters, although the authors of “Siblings Without Rivalry” have never attended a hospital sibling preparation class or tour.
But the two suspect such orientations are helpful, with a few reservations.
A Change of Heart
Says Faber: “Anything that makes the child a part of this momentous event (birth of another child) is likely to be helpful, but I’m a little uneasy with pins or T-shirts (offered at some programs) that say ‘I’m a big brother now’ or ‘I’m a big sister now.’ That might give an immediate glow of pleasure but the later feeling may be, ‘I’ve lost my position as the baby. I don’t feel like being a helping person. I want to be the baby. Everybody’s pressuring me.’ ”
Adds Mazlish, “A child may not want to feel like helping Mommy. I’d like to see them have the choice of helping or not helping.”
At the sibling preparedness class at St. John’s Hospital, taught by health educator Wendy Ziegler Marsh, there wasn’t much discussion about whether kids should or shouldn’t help Mommy. Though the children seemed less than interested when a Muppet movie called “I’m a Little Jealous of That Baby” was shown, they obviously enjoyed pushing a button to raise and lower a hospital bed like one their mothers would probably occupy.
The children also appeared to be having fun diapering dolls, putting on disposable gowns and scrubbing their hands and arms, just like doctors and nurses do.
And at least one major fear was allayed for class participant Beau Bright.
When the children visited the nursery window, he wanted to know if the babies had teeth.
Explained his mother, Maggie Bright of Malibu, “He has a puppy and the puppy has been biting him a lot. I think he’s worried about having something else with teeth in the house.”