The New Small Person

The New Small Person written and illustrated by Lauren Child (2015)

Elmore Green did not like having a small person living in his house. The small person made noise and moved his things around. It even licked his jelly beans. Elmore Green asked his parents if they could take the small thing back to wherever they had gotten him, but his parents said that was impossible. As the small thing grew bigger, it became even more annoying. One day it moved into his room and wore some of his old clothes. Then one night, Elmore Green was frightened of a bad dream, the small thing crawled into bed with him and told the scary things to go away. Elmore Green didn’t mind. Elmore Green didn’t mind when the small thing laughed at the same jokes he did on his favorite TV show, and he didn’t mind when the small thing gave him some of its toys to make his line of toys reach the bottom of the stairs. So Elmore Green decided it was okay to share his jelly beans with this small thing… all except the orange ones!

Sharing with a new small person in your family is very difficult for lots of little ones. There are many things parents can do to help make the transitions to big brother/big sister status easier on the older sibling. Start as soon as you can to transition into a new bed, new room, new routines. Then it won’t feel as if the new small person is taking over their domain. If possible, start introducing some special things exclusively for the older child… maybe jelly beans!