Protect sensitive newborn from very loud sister

[Funkid]

Hi all,

My daughter is 2 years old. She is very active, outgoing, forceful, loud. She is extremely sweet with my 3 months-old newborn, and soft also 95% of the time :-). But when she plays or roams around she is really loud, and I see my newborn startle. The first 2 months we thought he was colicky, because some evenings he would start crying nonstop for hours. Now we have learned that we need to protect his sleep much better, and protect him from too much stress. But now it’s my wife who is stressed all the time. She hushes our daughter non-stop. And of course it’s not in a 2 years-old’s nature to remember being quiet all the time. So my wife gets in a fight with her, because she does expect calm in the house, and she doesn’t see any other option to protect her newborn from noise-stress. And she even starts to constantly resent her daughter for not obeying. I try to tell her that we need to find some middle ground between protecting the newborn and being tolerant with the elder. I tell her that for thousands of generations of traditionally large families, newborns have had to cohabit with elder toddlers in restricted spaces. I am just realizing as I am writing this that in the old times toddlers were sent to play outside more readily than nowadays. And in the old times people were maybe not living in apartments as we do in our 100 square-meters but majoritarily in farms. I don’t know.

If you have any thoughts or solution to this I would be very glad to hear you :-).

Big thank yous !!

I reckon you should ask for this to be moved.... Education is def the wrong place!

My older brothers lived on a room and kitchen in a Glasgow tenement for the first seven/five years of their lives with our parents. They are fine . Both highly educated people. Tell you wee one to use their indoor voice around baby. You know - Parent

My MIL has 22 years between the eldest and youngest. Of the five, four are diagnosed with ADHD. When she brought the youngest home, the 8yo was a real screamer and shouter / walking disaster / inclined to run everywhere. Youngest learned to sleep or ignore the noise. As she said when he was a few days old, if he didn't then he'd come to the wrong house.

Kids do learn both to ignore routine noise and to quieten down a bit.

Teach indoor voice.

Hi all, thank you for your feedbacks. I started googling "indoor voice" :-). We will try to set this up at home.

The newborn will get used to the noise....when we were at that stage with the youngest she was more sensitive to noise then our first two. She would literally be woken up if someone turned the light switch on down the hall!! And she would cry. Anyway, we just kept living as normal and she quickly settled in and got used to her two noisy older siblings and when the dog barked etc.

I think the issue is that when your newborn arrives, all tiny, vulnerable and not able to do anything for themselves suddenly your dc#1's status changes without any difference in them.
They're suddenly this terribly germ-infested, responsible giant who understand everything perfectly and is a danger to the new baby. They should immediately understand everything you say, help perfectly the way you want and be totally unselfish to enable this new human who relies so much upon you to develop perfectly.

Obviously this isn't true. But because your little baby toddler is no longer that tiny one because you have a far smaller one to look after, they change in your eyes.
The cute little one running towards you, wanting you to sweep them off their feet and cuddle, is suddenly a danger to the newborn in your arms. A month ago you told granny how adorable they were doing it. Now you want to shout at them for putting your newborn at risk.

And it's an adjustment for all.
The newborn will learn to sleep through their noise; they're not stressed by it - they may even love it. I remember when dd2 was born (during holidays), heaving a sigh of relief when dd1 when back to preschool and there was a morning of calm. No. Dd2 spent the entire time screwing herself round to try and find where the fun noisy one had gone. She only really resettled when dd1 came home again.

Give your 2yo noisy time/quiet time. During quiet time give them something to do - watching a screen is no bad thing. At the end give them a treat for being so good. (box of raisins was dd1's treat) and make sure you praise the 2yo for being a great help/good big sister/and generally being wonderful. Tell them how great it is that they're able to put their own shoes on or put their plate in the dishwasher. Not only will they continue to do it, but then you'll find when old enough your dc2 does it because they want to be like the older one.

But also let them be little too. They're still a baby in a lot of ways. They still need carrying sometimes, or cuddling when sad, or helping get dressed - even if they normally do it. Don't expect them suddenly to be capable of everything just because they have more chance than a baby at managing it.

Where is the newborn when this happens? Try having them in a comfy stretchy sling - close to parent, feeling soothed. Much less likely to be startled by noise, and it’s a very protective feeling for the parent so might help your wife feel less on edge.

We have a noisy child and a baby. I've had to learn to relax over the loud singing and bellowing around the house (which before didn't bother me). The baby has been woken up by our eldest occasionally, however the noisy antics that annoyed me when the baby arrived are actually what the baby loves the most. She saves all of her best laughs for her sibling!

Hello, I would like to say thank you again for your beautiful feedbacks :-). It helps me a lot to take some backstand and perspective. A big sincere thank you !!