Nearly 4yo terrified of newborn sister

[jamoncrumpets]

My nearly 4yo DS has speech delay and, we're pretty sure, ASD (he's under assessment atm).

I gave birth to our DD three weeks ago and we always expected DS to ignore his sister for a while, but not to be terrified of her! He gets very upset when she cries (understandable) but today she brushed him with her foot while he was sat next to me and he absolutely freaked out.

I've been v careful not to push the baby onto DS or force him to interact with her, but I do talk to DS about his sister, and try and explain what I'm doing when I care for her 'I'm changing her nappy now' etc.

Has anybody else been through this? What helped? Or do I just carry on being patient and hoping he warms to her?

Dd is now 15, got asd dx aged 11. She was 20 months old when ds was born ... didn’t want to look at him, would push him away when we offered him to her to hold etc. I just carried on as usual (had 2 older dc also) and dd came round in her own time. Can’t remember how long it took, but obviously we’ve later learned that anything new takes dd a while to get used to.

I would just carry on as you’re doing. If you push your ds into anything it will have the opposite desired effect. It sounds like you’re doing great.

Congratulations 😊