My 7-year-old stepdaughter is getting a brother in May.
She's slowly shifting from "wow, this is cool!" to "OMG, I'm going to lose my dad and wake up a million times and get no attention at all."
The hospital we're going through has a sibling preparation class for kids 4-10, first Wednesdays of even-numbered months. My stepdaughter is with us on weekends, and her mom lives 70 miles away, so Wednesdays are out. (She will be with us weekdays starting the second week of June...but there's no July class.) We could not find an appropriate one on weekends--they're either for preschoolers or Christian-based (which is fine but we are not Christian). All of these classes seem to be geared toward the whole family (they're not drop-offs) so asking my stepdaughter's mother to take her to a sibling class in her city would be inappropriate and awkward, to say the least (and it's probably time-prohibitive for me and my husband to haul out there on a weekday to do a class there).
So...a book. But I looked at books and, without fail, they were geared toward very young children AND assume it was Mommy and not stepmom having the baby. The latter, we could probably deal with, but my stepdaughter really can't deal with picture books anymore. (They also seem pretty treacly to me...either over-the-top saccharine from start to finish, or they follow the pattern of "I'm getting a sister!"/"I don't want a sister!"/"Sell her back to the circus!"/"I want to be a baby again!"/"Oh but I can have ice cream and she can't"/"Hm, she smiled at me, maybe this isn't too bad." Which I realize is probably what my SD is going through but she's going through it at 7, not at 3.)
I guess what I'm looking for is a sibling preparation for older kids that at least acknowledges blended families. Something in between "Fluffy Duffy's Lovey Dovey Baby Sister Book" and "Siblings Without Rivalry." Does such a book exist?
(Maybe there's an untapped market. Project?)
She's slowly shifting from "wow, this is cool!" to "OMG, I'm going to lose my dad and wake up a million times and get no attention at all."
The hospital we're going through has a sibling preparation class for kids 4-10, first Wednesdays of even-numbered months. My stepdaughter is with us on weekends, and her mom lives 70 miles away, so Wednesdays are out. (She will be with us weekdays starting the second week of June...but there's no July class.) We could not find an appropriate one on weekends--they're either for preschoolers or Christian-based (which is fine but we are not Christian). All of these classes seem to be geared toward the whole family (they're not drop-offs) so asking my stepdaughter's mother to take her to a sibling class in her city would be inappropriate and awkward, to say the least (and it's probably time-prohibitive for me and my husband to haul out there on a weekday to do a class there).
So...a book. But I looked at books and, without fail, they were geared toward very young children AND assume it was Mommy and not stepmom having the baby. The latter, we could probably deal with, but my stepdaughter really can't deal with picture books anymore. (They also seem pretty treacly to me...either over-the-top saccharine from start to finish, or they follow the pattern of "I'm getting a sister!"/"I don't want a sister!"/"Sell her back to the circus!"/"I want to be a baby again!"/"Oh but I can have ice cream and she can't"/"Hm, she smiled at me, maybe this isn't too bad." Which I realize is probably what my SD is going through but she's going through it at 7, not at 3.)
I guess what I'm looking for is a sibling preparation for older kids that at least acknowledges blended families. Something in between "Fluffy Duffy's Lovey Dovey Baby Sister Book" and "Siblings Without Rivalry." Does such a book exist?
(Maybe there's an untapped market. Project?)
seems about right?...
