Can my 4 year old love and take care of her younger sister
ektasharma posted on Tue, 01/12/2010 - 15:58
I see that my 4 years old daughter is not very attached to her younger sister who is an year old. I want her to take care of her and help her. But mostly what I have observed is she comes to her for a while plays with her toys and leaves. I have never seen her spending more than 15 mins with her sis.
I want to know how can I get her to love her younger sis and also take care of her.
hi ekta,
4 years is the best age for this. she is looking to be big sister to others. and act like you have been acting with her.
if she is not doing this then you have to understand that not every person is alike. what you can do is to spend time together. all three of you. and find a game that will make elder sister to show some love to younger one. over a period of time she may start to like doing that.
hope it works for you.
My experience says that you need to make your daughter that she has someone younger to her to take care of. You need to give her some some responsibilities related to her younger sis. This will make her feel important and she will slowly learn to love and take care of her younger one.
This is what I did with my son and now he is a very caring and responsible elder bro.
This is what I did with my son and now he is a very caring and responsible elder bro.
You are right. In addition ekta try to find out things that three of you can do together. May be when you are giving a bath to you younger child ask your elder child to help you out. Make him feel important, he can choose clothes that he wants his sibling to wear. This will make him feel wanted and important. Sometimes due to younger sibling the elder one feels left out. Involving him with the sibling helps him get out of this feeling.
I have two sons and both of them love each other. My elder one takes very good care of his younger brother. Actually he is the one who has pampered his brother by giving him whatever he wants.
I think what has worked is that I involved my elder child from the time I got pregnant. I told him that he was going to get a younger bro/sis and then let him feel the baby's kick and after the younger one was born I let him help me out in taking care of his brother in small ways and thus he felt responsible and loves his brother.
You cannot just ask a child to go ahead and take care of her younger sister. It never works this way for adults also. First of all you need to build a proper bond between them. This should have been done from the day the baby was born.
Anyway its not late.
I can tell you what I have been doing with my kids. I ask my older son to tell her sister how to do certain things like how to put the toys in place. Also how to play with some toy which the younger one is not able to handle. There are many such things your older child can do. This way the older one feels proud that he can be a guide for the younger one. This way they spend time together and they develop a bond. A bond of love between the two will make them love each other and take care.