You have a son or daughter and after seeing the pregnancy test that is positive you decide, next to your partner, that it is time to give the news, because soon you will have a new playmate, dialogues, moments ... a new partner in their life.
You approach him, you look surprised and you explain with that "you know what?" and that "we have news to give you" that "soon, in a few months, you will have a little brother". But hey, do they know what a little brother is? If they don't have any ... what happens to their little heads? Namely ... that's why it's important resolve doubts, or anticipate them, when mom is pregnant again.
To illustrate my words I wanted to make use of a vignette of Major and Minor, of the cartoonist Chanti, which I love, in which we can see the doubts that the elder has when he learns that he will have a little brother. Below you can see the full story.
We believe that children know more than they know. Yes, it is true that they capture a lot of their surroundings, that they know more than we teach them (that is grace, but we would go wrong) and that sometimes they surprise us with incredible things. But that does not mean that they are able to understand everything, much less. Whenever it comes to my mind how smart my children are, I convince myself not to make them older ahead of time thinking about the years they have: "5 years ago it didn't even exist," I tell myself, or I just look at what happens if I put on my half-turned pants or if I climb it up to the armpits, in "Julian Muñoz mode", so that it would bother us a lot ... well, nothing happens. They are left like this. Conclusion? They are very smart, but they are still children.
So when we explain things we cannot think that they understand it in the same way we would when we received a message, let alone if the message is so important and transcendent. Having a new brother does not happen every day, you have it one day and you already have it for the rest of your life. And that changes the whole family functioning in many ways, so after "you're going to have a little brother" we could ask a simple question, to continue the conversation: "Do you know what a little brother is?".
And from there explain what babies are, how they are, show their pictures as a child, tell them that at first they do not speak and that they do not play, which is very important because children usually get along A big disappointment when the brother, the new playmate, is finally born, and they realize that he is not only much smaller and barely has hair, but also does not speak, walks, takes toys or anything at all.
Perhaps in this way we can prevent them from getting a wrong idea and come to imagine as many things as the elder brother of Chanti's vignette, that poor thing the more he thinks, the worse.
Images | Chanti In Babies and more | When a child is born, the older brother grows suddenly, Letter to my future brother: "The day he is born", Ask your son if he wants to have a little brother?
