My two older girls are minimally involved with their 7 mo triplet siblings. The babies were delicate at first and on monitors, so they could not do a lot at the beginning to help. Now I think they still feel tentative (and a little resentful). Any suggestions?

We've got a 2, almost 3 year old along with our GGG who are almost 5 months corrected. We did not bring our girls home on monitors so our experience was a bit different.

What we try to do is invite our 2 year old to "teach" the babies something - so she reads the babies "Brown Bear Brown Bear" book, or shows them a picture book. We give her lots of praise for doing this and she becomes puffed with pride over it. Lately, we've also been allowing her to help feed the babies a small bottle - we give our girls Iron and Vitamin separate from their milk so Jennifer (2) gets to feed the babies the little bottle (1/2 ounce) with our supervision. She has always been quite keen on cuddling the babies. We've allowed this, again with heavy supervision, we put a feeding pillow on her lap and a baby on the pillow with Mom or Dad right there. She is delighted and after 1-2 minutes is quite happy to give up the baby. I've also encouraged her to get involved bathing the babies. Again, this involves minimal hands on however, she helps wash an arm or a leg or just entertains while I do the washing.

Anyway, those are some of the things we do to try and encourage some loving contact and caring gestures. I would encourage you to try to identify some strengths your daughters have -- if they are good a drawing, have them draw a picture for the babies and display it in the baby room...you know your girls best, work with their strengths.

Hope that helps a bit...

Janet
G - 12/07 35 weeks
GGG-04/10 30 weeks

Thanks for sharing! And bless you ~ a toddler with triplets must be quite a challenge!