[Follow-up to Finally a reason to smile.]
What happens when you take a three year old from his mother for a week, deny him the pictures of his mother that she sent with him on the trip and deny phone calls to his mother when he is missing her? Trauma, of course.
It wasn’t immediately noticeable what changes occured to my son because of this trip. He did seem to follow me around the house a bit more closely when I was cleaning or whatnot, but that was to be expected. It wasn’t until about five days after he returned, and his first day back at the church he and I go to, that the change was obvious.
For the past five months I have been attending this church with my sister and when I get there, LG runs right into the kids’ playroom without any prompting from me. In fact, it had always been a challenge to get him to stand still for a moment so I could take his coat off and kiss him before I went into the adult service. He had toys, he had the helpers he adored, and he had his special friend, a little girl he calls “Lee-Lee Dirlfren.” Lee-Lee is her nickname and what everyone calls her, Dirlfren, well, say it out loud and you’ll figure it out. It’s adorable.
Anyhow, this first night back at church after his return, I took him into the playroom as usual and he started to play, as usual. I was talking to another parent and didn’t leave immediately, but after about five minutes it was time to go to the service.
It only took two minutes before LG realized something was wrong and came running into the sanctuary where I was, and he was SCREAMING in terror. Immediately I thought maybe he had hurt himself as this was definitely a something is broken or bleeding everywhere cry. It was heartbreaking. He was crying so hard he was barely breathing – you moms know that type of cry.
After I checked him out and found nothing physically wrong, I went, with a little clinging monkey around my neck, to the playroom to find out what happened. The helper said he just looked up and around, said in a sad voice, “Mommy?”, then ran out screaming. He sat on my lap just hugging me for the next hour and a half until the service was over.
The next week? The exact same thing. Also that week, I had an appointment at the university to take my Compass test for placement and took LG to my aunt’s for her to watch him for a couple of hours. The same thing happened, but this time, I had to go, even though it broke my heart to do it.
Moral of this story? If things are bad in your relationship, no matter how much you want to get back at the other person for slights, real or imagined, think first of how vengeance or selfishness will affect your child(ren). The experts aren’t lying when they say in a divorce, it’s the children that hurt the most — and it doesn’t have to be that way.
