How to help your younger kids adjust too?

[greenemami]

Not sure how to title this, but how do you help the younger kids in your house, who live with you all the time, adjust to a sibling who comes and goes? My dd is 2 and is having a rough time with the transition of having her big sister here. She loves her and gets so excited to see her, but initially has a hard time settling down, sharing (especially sharing mommy), etc. All normal 2-year-old behavior, of course, but definitely magnified when her sister comes over. Incidentally, these are similar behaviors to my dsd (who is nearly 8) when she comes over as well-I think that as the "traveling" one though, she has gotten more help dealing with it than dd. Has anybody had these problems? As I said, dd gets so excited to see her sister, but I have noticed her really having a tough time with the constant transitions-it is especially sad when dsd leaves and dd just looks so confused

[aricha]

We've definitely dealt with the younger siblings adjusting to their older sister coming and going. We lived nearby and had equal physical custody with a transition every 2-3 days until he was about 2 1/2... then we moved and she was with us all the time, and now she is with us full-time for long stretches and with mom full-time for long stretches.

When he was a toddler and there was frequent coming and going, we kept the arrival routine really consistent. We picked her up to start our parenting time, so we made it a part of a morning routine-- we picked her up, went out for a bagel, then dropped mom (me) off at work. Then my husband came home with the kids and had some kind of activity with them (something quiet or messy or outdoors depending on mood, weather, etc) where he could focus all his attention on the kids. He found it to be a more difficult transition if he tried to do something like dishes or laundry when he first got home with them... he needed to focus attention on them to help with the transition.

The book "Two Homes" has been a favorite because it talks about a child who has a home at one house and a home at another... two rooms, two toothbrushes, etc etc. Even though it is aimed at the child whose parents are divorced, we've found it helpful for the younger kids as well.

[pinksprklybarefoot]

No good advice, as we are just stumbling into this ourselves. Now that DS is 2, he seems to really notice the transitions. It didn't seem to affect him when he was younger.

We are week on/week off with extra days here and there fairly frequently.

The biggest problem for us is sleep. The kids share a room when DSD is here, and it seems to take DS a few nights to get used to hanging someone else in the room with him. The first night or two almost always involves him waking in the middle of the night. I am trying to make it a point to have a consistent bedtime routine no matter who is in the house.

Some other routines, we need to get better about when DSD is not here - for example, we *always* have family dinner of some sort on weeks that she is here, but have been a little lax on that during the "off" weeks. Possibly because the weeks that she is with us are a lot busier and more stressful, so the off weeks have seemed like little vacations. Now that DS is getting older and a little more demanding (and another one is arriving), the off weeks probably won't seem quite so "off" to us adults, if that makes sense. I am looking forward to when DS starts preschool and has his own thing to focus on - right now everything revolves around her schedule because she is the only big kid in the house.

I am looking forward to hearing others' responses. I feel like we are at a point now where if we handle this well, DS will adjust easily, but if we handle it poorly, we'll set ourselves up for years of rough transitions.