How to reduce jealousy

[RainbowFlowers]

Hi, I'm 28 weeks pregnant with second son. My first son will be 3.5 years old when baby arrives. I really want things to be better between my sons than with my older brother and I. When we were little he was very aggressive due to jealousy I know part of this was just down to the smaller age gap it was 21 months. Also partly to do with my mums very soft style not confronting things and not a good communicator.

So far I have involved my DS with the pregnancy as much as possible. Taken him to the second scan. He rubs my belly and we talk about the baby on it's way. He's quite caring in nature so this helps.

Also for his birthday which was in December (too close to xmas for me to want him to spend the money on him then) he got given some money which I've kept with the plan of his Dad taking him out to choose a toy around when the baby is born just to kind of associate the baby's birth with something positive. Maybe say it's for being a good big brother or something?...I'm open to suggestions on this.

Is there anything else I could be doing? Is there anything in hindsite that you would have done or not done with your children? How have you managed the inevitable jealousy?

Thanks in advance.

My kids are 20 months apart. When the second was born we gave her big brother a gift from the baby. We didn't do anything much just made sure that while all visitors etc were cooing over the baby that he was made a fuss of too. I would also avoid the 'you're the big brother you need to be good/take care of/help out'. It's a lot of pressure on a kid. They may not want to or be able to. Having a younger child doesn't make the older one suddenly more mature, in fact he may regress for a bit.
Try and just do something with your older child while the other one looks after the baby (and not just with his dad, you too).

Thanks @pipandmum that is such a good point about pressuring them into the role of the helper/carer just because they are older.

I'll have to work out how to spend some time with just me and older son.

My older dc were always allowed to help at bath time. I remember leaning over a baby bath on the lounge rug as an older dc took out the plug..
Real test of dm patience..

We're just moving this over to parenting for the OP.