Separation and a secondary caregiver
Jan. 7th, 2011 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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plan_surviveMy 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?
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?
no subject
Date: 2011-01-07 07:22 pm (UTC)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!
no subject
Date: 2011-01-07 08:40 pm (UTC)