Separation and a secondary caregiver

[puzzlement]

My husband A is about to go away for two weeks of work travel. V (11.5 months old) and I are not accompanying him.

My mother insists that V will entirely forget his father within days, and that we should if anything encourage this process, that V will find phone calls, video Skype, pictures of his father upsetting. (She is basing this off her experience of leaving me alone at the same age: I was weaned about about 10 months old and soon after that she had a week-long holiday without me.)

To make things worse, there will be considerable other unavoidable disruption of V's surroundings at the same time. V and I are going to stay with my parents for the two weeks that A is away, and then when A returns, he, V and I are all immediately going away together for a week during which I will be working, and A will be V's primary carer (although V and I will see each other multiple times each day, so not the same thing).

For anyone else who has had a parent-child separation of about this length, did you find that the baby entirely forgot the parent? Is total erasure of his father the way to go here and if not, what level of contact did you have and did it work out? And how did the reunion go?

Comments

[br3nda]

if it helps - Casey definitely remembers her granddad, who visits and stays with us on a semi-regular 3 weekly basis (due to his work). she started very clearly remembering him from about 9 months old.

Based on that dataset of our one child, I'm thinking Vincent will take about 20 minutes to remember your husband A. (.. you order your husbands alphabetically?)

[br3nda]

oh, i should add - my dad (granddad) can scoop her up on arrival and head off to the park with her, without panic of any sort by Casey.

Her nanny cannot do this after a 2 week break.

[phoenixsong]

I sincerely doubt V will forget his father after a couple weeks. My son is 11 months old today, and he has spent a week at a time away from one or both of his parents with no lapse of recognition. If anything, I would say R experienced his first ever bout of stranger anxiety over the holidays, when all three of us traveled out of state to visit our extended families. By the end of the trip, meeting some 50 different people in a 4 day span (some old, some new), he was definitely showing a preference for myself or my husband.

That said, pictures and Skype might be a little abstract for him to grasp, especially if he hasn't seen Skype in use before. If there are pictures of his dad around the house, I suspect that removing them would either have no effect, or be more upsetting, depending on V's temperament. Phone calls are also a little abstract at this age without a visual -- IIRC, it usually takes kids a couple years to grasp that a disembodied voice can represent a person they know.

In short, honestly, I think you're mom's full of it. What is she basing her memory of you "forgetting" her upon? I believe object permanence is something that is at least beginning to develop by this point, so why wouldn't it apply to people, especially primary caretakers?

[puzzlement]

Her memory is that I clung to my new caretakers (grandparents) and exhibited strong signs of stranger anxiety directed at her and my father and did not warm to them quickly. This really struck her and she is genuinely convinced that children of this age have very short memories for people. Whenever she sees him act particularly lovingly she will say something like "isn't it interesting? he acts like that but if you went away for a couple of days it would be as if you never existed to him!"

Thanks for the thoughts. My son has used video Skype a fair bit (all the people I talk to on it want to meet him), although of course I am not clear on precisely how much of a connection he makes between the amusing flat pictures and the concept of people.

Happy month birthday to your son!

[phoenixsong]

I think this is the point where you gently point out to your mom that every child is different, and move the discussion elsewhere. ;)

[dmsj]

My son lived a couple of hours away from one grandparent (and further from all the other ones) at the age you're describing, and he never forgot who *they* were, so I can't imagine your son forgetting you. He would go months at a time without seeing any of them, and always knew them each time.

I don't think it actually matters *which* way you go - pictures, Skype, or nothing. He's not going to forget his daddy in a matter of two weeks.

[ailbhe]

We left R behind while the toddler, the 8-month-old and I visited my mother for a month, and although the 8-month-old spent a lot of time LOOKING for R and not finding him (and giving us our coats and showing us the door and generally wanting to go home) she didn't forget him at all in any way.

One of my children was upset by Daddy's voice in the telephone, and two of them love it. You might want to practice over short distances first so that the baby doesn't think Daddy has been, like, EATEN by the phone or laptop.

[puzzlement]

A leaves in five hours, so unfortunately there's no practising time left. The baby has used phones and Skype before, but unfortunately never with people he's very familiar with in the flesh.

Thanks for letting me know how your experience went! That's reassuring.