How to keep a toddler happily absorbed, hands-on and screen-free while you settle a newborn, with picks by age and budget from across the UK.
The single most effective thing you can do to help a toddler through the arrival of a new baby is to give them something genuinely compelling to do with their hands. Not a screen, not a tablet propped against a cushion, but a real object they can turn, stack, sort or roll: something that asks something back of them. Research led by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff consistently shows that hands-on, open-ended play supports language acquisition, emotional regulation and attention far more effectively than passive screen time, and those are precisely the capacities a toddler needs most when the household is suddenly, wonderfully, exhaustingly different. The practical answer to "what do I give my older child when the baby arrives?" is a small, carefully chosen collection of wooden and sensory toys that need no batteries, no supervision and no Wi-Fi.
This guide is organised by age band and budget so you can move straight to what is relevant. You will find toys suited to children between twelve months and three years, a word on building independent play habits before the due date, and guidance on what actually makes a toy worth spending money on. Everything recommended here is screen-free, open-ended and durable enough to outlast the newborn phase and several siblings beyond it.
What the research says about hands-on play during family upheaval
Dimitri Christakis at the University of Washington has shown that unstructured, object-based play in the first three years builds the attentional frameworks children rely on for self-regulation later in childhood. When a toddler's world is destabilised by a new sibling, that self-regulation capacity is precisely what parents most need their child to draw upon. A wooden toy that demands active manipulation, rather than passive watching, keeps the prefrontal circuits engaged in ways a screen does not. Separately, Alison Gopnik reminds us that children this age are, in her phrase, "the R&D department of the human species": they learn by doing, touching and hypothesising, not by observing a glowing rectangle.
A new baby does not merely add a person to a family. For a toddler, it reorganises everything: routines, attention, the geography of the sofa, the emotional weather of every room. Jeffrey Trawick-Smith's decades of observational research into play quality found that children in socially disrupted environments benefit most from play that is absorbing enough to occupy their full attention, open-ended enough to grow with their mood, and tactile enough to provide the sensory grounding that regulates anxiety. Wooden toys, particularly those with varied textures, weights and sounds, meet all three criteria. The American Academy of Pediatrics continues to advise limiting screen use for children under eighteen to twenty-four months, excepting video calls with family.
The aim during the newborn weeks is not to distract your toddler but to give them something genuinely satisfying to do. There is a meaningful difference. Distraction is temporary and leaves a child more fractious when it ends. Genuine absorption, the kind that comes from figuring out how a shape fits a slot or how high a tower can go before it falls, leaves a child calmer, more confident and easier to reconnect with when you put the baby down.
At this age the key qualities are chunky grip, satisfying cause-and-effect, and safety. Wooden shape sorters, stacking rings and simple peg puzzles are ideal. Look for pieces large enough to be grasped by a fist rather than pinched by fingertips, painted in high-contrast colours with non-toxic finishes. A single well-made shape sorter or a set of smooth nesting cups can hold a twelve-month-old for longer than almost any battery-powered alternative, because the challenge is calibrated by the child's own developing dexterity, not set by a manufacturer's algorithm.
At this tier you can afford sets that offer multiple modes of play: a shape sorter that doubles as a storage box, or a set of wooden blocks in varied shapes that become a posting game. Sensory boards with elements that click, slide, turn and latch are particularly valuable because each element presents a fresh sub-challenge. Maria Montessori's principle that the hand is the instrument of the mind finds its most direct application in toys like these, where every manipulation teaches something about the physical world.
Jaques of London, established in 1795 and the world's oldest games company, offers a range of wooden and educational toys designed with exactly this longevity in mind. Their pieces are weighted and finished to a standard that cheaper alternatives rarely match.
Browse Jaques wooden toys for toddlersBetween eighteen and thirty-six months, imaginative play begins to bloom. A child this age can sustain a self-invented narrative for ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes with the right prop. Simple wooden vehicles, small figures without prescribed storylines, and sets of coloured wooden cubes all serve this purpose. Lev Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development is relevant here: a good toy should sit just above what a child can comfortably do, drawing them forward without frustrating them. An eighteen-month-old who cannot yet build a stable tower of six blocks will spend a remarkably long time trying, which is exactly what you need during a 3 a.m. feed.
At this budget level, look for modular sets: wooden train tracks, peg-and-board construction sets, or interlocking wooden tiles. These scale with development because a twenty-month-old will use them one way and the same child at thirty months will use them entirely differently. The TIMPANI study, which tracked play quality across a range of toy types, found that open-ended toys generated significantly more language, more creative behaviour and longer sustained attention than single-purpose or electronic toys. A modular set is, in effect, an investment in months rather than weeks of play value.
A note on language and the case for silence
Hart and Risley's landmark research on early language environments established that the quality of interaction a child experiences in the first three years has lifelong consequences for vocabulary and literacy. Screens produce language at the child but rarely with the child. A wooden toy, by contrast, creates natural opportunities for the back-and-forth, serve-and-return conversation that Patricia Kuhl and Andrew Meltzoff have shown to be the engine of language acquisition, even when that conversation is brief and happens between feeds. A parent narrating a toddler's block-stacking from across the room is doing more for that child's development than a forty-minute educational video.
The parents who find the newborn transition easiest are usually those who began, some weeks before the due date, rotating a small number of toys in and out of circulation. Put two or three items away for a fortnight, then reintroduce them. To a toddler, a forgotten toy is as exciting as a new one. Pair this with a short, consistent daily window of independent play, even five minutes to begin with, in which you are present but not actively engaging. Jeffrey Trawick-Smith and Stuart Brown both document how children who have practised independent play in low-stress conditions transfer that capacity naturally to higher-stress ones.
Introduce the specific toys you plan to rely on during feeds before the baby comes, so the child already has a relationship with them. A shape sorter a toddler has been playing with for three weeks is far more absorbing than a brand-new one unwrapped in a moment of desperation at midnight.
Durability, open-ended design and tactile quality are the three criteria that matter most. A toy is durable if it survives being dropped on a tile floor, chewed by the baby eighteen months later, and handed to a third child without losing structural integrity. It is open-ended if a child can use it in more than one way and if there is no single correct outcome, no melody that plays when you get it right. It has tactile quality if the grain, weight and temperature of the material provide sensory information that plastic cannot. Wood is warm, slightly varied in texture, and heavy enough to feel real in a small hand. Those properties are not aesthetic preferences; they are the physical vocabulary through which a child under three understands the world.
Explore Jaques educational toys, designed to lastJaques of London has been making games and toys since 1795, longer than any other games company in the world. Their commitment to craft and quality control makes them a reliable source for wooden and educational toys that will genuinely last. For grandparents and friends looking for a sibling gift that acknowledges the older child rather than the baby, a beautifully made wooden toy from a company with that provenance carries a different weight than a piece of plastic from a warehouse shelf.
It is not too late, but it does require patience and realistic expectations. Start with one minute, genuinely one minute, of independent play with a novel toy, then expand gradually. Research by Adele Diamond on self-regulation suggests that executive function develops with practice, not with age alone. The key is consistency: the same time each day, the same calm hand-off. Two weeks of this before the birth will make a meaningful difference. Do not wait for the baby to arrive to begin.
A shape sorter or a set of smooth wooden stacking pieces kept exclusively for night feeds. The principle is novelty through scarcity: if the toy only appears during feeds, it retains its power to absorb. Choose something with no lights, no sounds, and no pieces small enough to cause anxiety in a dark room. The tactile simplicity of a well-made wooden sorter is perfectly suited to a toddler who is slightly sleep-dazed and needs something to do with their hands rather than something to think hard about.
Absolutely. A simple wooden shape sorter, a set of nesting cups or a small peg puzzle sits comfortably within that budget and, if well made, will hold a toddler's attention as effectively as anything more expensive. The TIMPANI research found no linear relationship between cost and play quality in the under-three age group. What matters is open-endedness and tactile quality, not price point. Avoid anything that feels light or hollow; weight is a reliable proxy for quality at this budget level.
Frame them as the older child's special tools: things the baby cannot have because they are not old enough. A nearly-three-year-old is acutely sensitive to status and the privileges of being "the big one." Introduce a new wooden toy with ceremony rather than utility: unwrap it together, explore it together for five minutes, then let them take over. Researchers including Peter Gray and Jaak Panksepp emphasise that play is intrinsically motivating when it is freely chosen and personally meaningful. Give the child ownership of their toys and the autonomy to use them as they wish, and the screen will recede naturally as a point of desire.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.