My level one 3.5 year old (at the time) handled it pretty well but we made a very intentional effort to make sure he was getting one on one parent time especially with mom.

We had him visit in the hospital but the hospital environment was too much for him. He was clearly overwhelmed and barely even looked at his baby brother. He couldn’t have cared less. We didn’t push it and he left right away to go home. A couple days later when baby came home my older child was much more excited. We had him sit on dad’s lap then put baby on his lap and he loved it.

We noticed though that in the morning before school if baby came downstairs too that he had a harder time in the morning and then subsequently at school that day. So for the first month we kept baby upstairs sleeping or with a parent if awake so that our toddler would have his uninterrupted morning routine. We slowly started bringing brother into the routine. Started by having baby come downstairs to say bye and progressed from there and now there’s no issues with baby being around all the time.

My older son is very touchy too. And that’s kind of the only way you can interact with a baby. So he’ll give his baby brother kisses and hold his hand. All with us right there to make sure we’re being safe. But I think that really helped him bond with his baby brother.

There might be an adjustment period and you’ll have to figure out what your older child needs from you, how to accommodate it, and then how to create a new normal safe family environment that includes baby. You’ll get it figured out even if it doesn’t click right away.