When Parents Part by Penelope Leach

Author:Penelope Leach [Leach, Penelope]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-101-87405-9
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

Grandmother of girl, aged three

“Mary’s not four yet. She can’t get her arms around the mailbox that stands outside her front door, but it’s a sturdy, familiar landmark, and she’s going to hang on to it whatever all the grown-ups say about Daddy taking her for a treat. I think she knows she’s being conned. Treats have Mommy in them. Or me. Or maybe Lucy’s mom (she’s good at treats).”

Yet another year or two on, at four or five, that shyness with and reluctance to go with a scarcely known visiting father may take on a desperate intensity, with the child tearful and panicky when the father comes to pick her up. The extreme reaction is usually not to being with the father but to being taken away from the mother. Look at it from the child’s point of view: Daddy left, so how can she be sure that if she takes her eyes off Mommy, she won’t leave, too (see chapter 8)?

A scene like that is agony for everybody. For the child, who is submerged in the worst kind of fear there is for a child that age: fear of losing her main attachment figure. For the mother, who hates to see her so upset (and hates the father for making her that way), and of course for the father, who is being made to feel like an insensitive brute for wanting to spend time with the daughter he loves. Probably nobody meant father and child to become alienated, but they have.

If a child’s relationship with his or her father is protected and facilitated from the beginning, even though the two of them don’t live in the same house anymore (see chapter 5), painful separation scenes like this can usually be avoided. But not always. Separation anxiety is ordinary in one- to three-year-olds and by no means unusual for another two or three years, especially when family stresses make children feel insecure (see chapter 8). But if it is not unusual for “contact arrangements” to blow up, it is vital not to abandon contact altogether. For babies, toddlers, and preschool children there is one particular solution that’s guaranteed from the child’s point of view, though it can be tough on parents: let her father come to the child’s home to spend time with her and, if necessary, have Mom hanging around in the background so she feels safe.

Understandable though Mary’s mother’s feelings are, they belong to her own adult relationship as woman-to-man, not to Mary’s relationship with her father. Some agreed-upon grown-up ground rules might help in situations like these. For example, you might agree that child and father stay downstairs or in the bit of the home where she normally plays; that he uses the downstairs bathroom and doesn’t go upstairs; and that he only gets cups of coffee if you offer.

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