I'm out of the country this week so I've got a few posts that will go up automatically for the next few days. As you'll see, it seems like I couldn't get my head around only one theme this week — probably has a lot to do with how completely out of control my life feels right now. It's all good: I'm LOVING being with my kids these days (they'll be 4 in March and there's just something about this age that seems to groove with my parenting style), I'm crazy-busy at work with some great projects, and I'm traveling overseas to work with fabulous people. Each one of these things seems great on its own, it's the combination / balance that I'm having a problem with. Yes, I know this isn't a personal blog, apparently I just need to get those excuses out. And it sets up the premise for today's post and tomorrow's follow-up…
I thought I'd post some thoughts about longer separations from our children. I don't mean leaving your child for a few hours or for the evening. I'm talking for a couple of days or longer. We've had two readers send questions about this issue, the gist of which boiled down to two main concerns: (1) Are there better and worst ages to leave your child for a few days/weeks? and (2) What can I do to make the separation more bearable for my child?
Since my kids turned one and I returned to work full time, I've thought (and freaked the freak out) about these questions a lot. I've had to leave my kids for 2-6 days at one time about twice per year for business trips. Leading up to these trips, I invariably get very anxious about how my boys will cope. I try to remind myself that they're with their father, that he is an equal partner in this parenting gig, that they love him equally and need him equally. But who am I kidding? There's no doubt about the equal love, but the attachment is different and when they get tired, hungry, hurt, frustrated, or challenged in other ways, they want mommy (and I fully recognize this isn't the case for all family situations). But we do what we have to do — some of us have little choice but to leave our kids for a few days and many of us actually think it's healthy to go away for a weekend or so without the kids (count me in both groups).
So… are there better and worst ages to leave your kids for a while? For those of you who have been following this blog for longer than a couple of weeks, you'll probably have a good guess at my answer. Yes, I DO think there are certain stages that will be harder than others for your children to deal with separations. Those stages happen to correspond to the sensitive windows in development that I spent 6 months talking about in terms of sleep training children. The same stages that are particularly difficult for sleep training are also generally difficult for ANY transition, especially those that have to do with separations. Before the age of about 8 months or so, I actually think these separations are not too bad for babies (I suspect they're much harder on moms). They haven't yet reached the big 8 – 11 month transition that will usher in a sudden burst in working memory and allow the child to understand that "out of sight is NOT out of mind." Even when mom is not in the room, she's "out there" somewhere… As I've written at length, this ability to keep mom in mind even when she's not present results in the onset of full-blown separation anxiety — NOT a time when you first want to take off on your child for days on end. Another stage you may want to avoid leaving for extended trips is the 18-21 month period. This is a DOOZY (and, of course, it happens to be one of the ages when I DID have to leave my boys… I remember the weeping phone calls to this day). I won't get into all the MANY, MANY reasons why this stage is considered the most dramatic transition period in early childhood… you can read about all the gory details here. Suffice it to say that children are really GETTING social interactions in a way that they weren't able to before — "real" language takes off, they understand simple rules and family members' roles and they get the idea that they are expected to follow rules and respect those family roles. Most parents report this stage as the most intense emotional period in their child's life, fraught with buckets of neediness, moodiness, tantrums, meltdowns, and general crazed vulnerability (there's lots of research to back this up, reviewed in our book). Leaving your children for extended periods during this phase may heighten their sense of vulnerability and neediness and it may take a while before you child "forgives" you for leaving, once you are back.
The other stages to watch out for are the 2.5 to 3 year old period and the 3.5 to 4 year old stage. Different developmental issues are at play at each of these various sensitive periods, but the general rationale for avoiding long-term separations during these phases are the same: these are developmental transitions during which children are more emotionally vulnerable, more attuned to separations and their meaning, and they're in need of more reassurance and support than at other more stable periods.
A couple of extra considerations: (1) Kids will likely be more vulnerable at the beginning of these sensitive periods, when new cognitive acquisitions are just emerging and they're coping with this novelty; the more into the stage they are, the more likely it is that they've started to learn to cope with their new sense of the world (and the accompanying new skills). Or at least that's what I'm telling myself, as my kids round the corner of a sensitive stage (3.5 – 4 years old) and I'm gallivanting in Europe. (2) If you gotta go, you gotta go. Sometimes we have no choice but to take off during one of these sensitive periods. In those cases, the mere recognition that it might be tough on our kids might be important. We can try to put in place some plans that might help ease children's distress like scheduling more phone calls (or less, depending on how your child responds to these brief connections from afar) and/or taking some extra time off when we return.
But that's the topic for the next post: What CAN we do to make separations from our children less stressful? (Hint: See this pic of one of my boys? That's just one of WAY too many guilt presents he got after I returned from my last overseas trip <sigh>)
Tell us: Have you left your child during one of these sensitive periods or during more stable ages? How did it go? Do you think it's easier to leave younger or older children? How have your children coped with your times away? How have you coped? Do you think it's generally a good or bad idea to leave your children (with a partner or grandparents or other trusted caregivers)
for a few days?
(I haven't said this in a while, so I wanted to remind readers: ALL opinions are very welcome, whether they conflict or are consistent with mine. We want to know what YOU think. What YOUR experiences have been. And I'd like to hear from those of you who DON'T think it's wise to leave kids just as much as I'd like to hear from those who do. Really. Let's talk…)
I am a SAHM of two kids, aged 2.5 and 6 weeks, and I hate the idea of leaving them for longer than an evening. (Obviously this feeling is more intense with such a little baby.) In the weeks leading up to the birth of my second child, I found it very stressful to think about leaving the older one for more than a day while I was in the hospital (talk about HAVE TO do it.) She did much better than expected, but I would feel pretty selfish taking off for an optional weekend.
That said, having a sitter that both the toddler and I really trusted helped tremendously. My being gone for roughly 36 hours seems not to have bothered anyone too much, but I think if we’d pushed it much longer, the older child would have been pretty upset. (Thanks to the swine flu, she wasn’t allowed to visit the hospital.) The ridiculous number of gifts and her grandmas’ practice of indulging her rather than following our normal rules helped too.
Bella, do you think having multiple attachment figures help? I am thinking about the fact that I was raised primarily (from birth till about 4 years of age) by my grandmothers, and saw my parents at nights and went ‘home’ (to my parents’ house) at weekends. It helped of course that we all lived in the same city. In that sense I had 3-4 attachment figures (two grandmothers plus mom and dad) rather than the normal 1 or 2. I don’t know if this meant my attachment relationships were more ‘spread out’ but I don’t think I suffered tremendously (or much at all) when my parents were ‘away’, similarly, when it was summer time and I went ‘home’ for a few months it wasn’t at all stressful to be away from my grandmothers. I guess modern families don’t have this kind of luxury of having grandparents so close by who can serve as additional (or surrogate?) attachment figures.
My daughter is 19 months old, and she seems ok with staying at either set of grandparents’ house for a weekend. She has spent a lot of her weekends this way since she was about 6 months old, so she knows her grandparents well. I have no idea, though, whether she would notice the difference between spending 1-2 nights with grandparents, versus a week.
A second comment: I think that a lot of whether a child copes well with being away from parents for a few days has to do not only with the developmental stage, but with the child’s temperament, and the surrounding circumstances. For example, if weekends at grandma’s are commonplace (like with my kid, and with Bonnie when she was a kid) I think it’s ok and probably even beneficial. But if the separation is not part of the usual routine (i.e. mommy goes away on business for the first time) and even more so if it’s both unusual and due to stressful circumstances (mommy is in the hospital) it’s more likely to be rough on the kid no matter what age.
I think Irene made a good point. When my husband and I went to Japan for a week, our then 2-and-a-half year old son stayed with my parents for a week. He had a great time and loved every minute of it. However, six months later, when he was three, I went in labor and went to the hospital while he was asleep. He woke up to see my parents, and burst into tears and was inconsolable until my husband came back. We’d prepared him for both events, and we assumed that since he did Japan so well, this would be easier, but apparently not.
This is totally freaking me out. I have managed to avoid work travel up til now and have had only one night away – my son is 17 months old.
I have THREE trips scheduled for the first quarter of 2010 – starting when he is 19.5 months old through 21.5 months old.
I fear this. I’m trying to arrange it so that they’re only 2 or 3 nights each, but … seems like the timing is pretty bad. Sigh.
What a great topic, just as my husband and I are contemplating leaving our son for a week in the 2.5-3 yr window to traipse off to Seoul for a conference. Yeesh.
Well, we did leave him for 6 days with his grandparents this past summer. He was just 22 months (like a week over the 18-21 month window), and though I was uber-anxious about it, he was just fine. He was better than fine. He had a fun week with his grandparents and we had some much-needed child-free time in Paris.
To prepare him for the separation, we explained to him in advance that we were going away and that he would go and stay with Nana & Granddad during that time. He has spent lots of time with them, with visits at least once a month (they live in a different city) and he ADORES them. I think it also helped that our family dog went with him so he had his buddy with him during the separation.
When he asked my parents where we were, they told him we had gone on a plane to Paris and would be home soon. We didn’t arrange for phone calls because he didn’t really get the phone at that time and we thought that hearing our voices would be more upsetting than comforting. Now that he gets the phone, we phone to check in every night with him when we’re away, and he now loves these conversations. Previously, he was just puzzled and then bored.
Our first separation was actually right in the middle of the 8 to 11 month window so we could get away overnight. The second was at 20 months.
Honestly, all these separations were fine, FOR HIM. Oh the irony: I was a wreck — he was fine. On day three in Paris, I freaked out and had an existential crisis where I believed I had made a very wrong decision to put my career ahead of being a parent (I was at a conference). I paced the streets of Paris at midnight, telling myself that it was so very very wrong that I was so far away from my child. This eventually passed as I talked myself down, reminding myself that MY separation anxiety was clouding my judgement and, in all likelihood, he was just peachy-keen, running about in my parent’s garden, chasing chipmunks. (my parents were delivering daily email updates on his activities, meals, general psychological & physical well-being and, yes, he was just fine).
The second separation, I also lost it and actually began writing a will IN THE CAR TO MONTREAL. That’s right, in a panic, I freaked out that I’d never written down our wishes for our son’s future if something happened to us (had talked to people etc., but wanted something in writing) so I penned the damn thing in the car, and we both signed it at a rest stop. I am being totally serious. Then we got to Montreal and I phoned home immediately, after resisting makign a THIRD call from the road. And guess what? He was F.I.N.E.
Is this something that has been studied Is & Tracy? PARENTAL separation anxiety?
We managed several nights away and even a weekend away during our first daughter’s first couple of years. To be honest, I can’t remember when we did them- I suppose I could go back to my blog archives and see. They all went really well, although I remember one for which our daughter through a fit as we left. My parents have a video showing her dancing and giggling with them literally minutes later, though.
I wonder if it helps that we were leaving her with her grandparents, whom she adores and whose visits are seen as special treats?
I only had one business trip, which was when she was 6 months old. I changed jobs a few months later, and my current job doesn’t require travel. The business trip was far more traumatic for me than my daughter at that age!
Oh thats so sweet of you. Well this is a very good idea, there was something wrong going on till now but now i understood what the matter was so will implement the tips from the blog and lets see if it works. Thanks for this blog, it was so much helpful to brainwash the wrong things i was having in my mind.