It was a sunny day in May, a good day for flying, I thought, as my son and I played on the front steps of our house. Out of the corner of my eye, coming down the block, I could see the taxi that would take me to the airport. My heart lurched. It was 10 minutes early.
I wasn`t ready to say goodbye.
I had been planning my trip to the Soviet Union for a year. From the first, my husband and I agreed that the opportunity to accompany 20 early childhood educators on a tour of Soviet day-care centers was something I shouldn`t pass up. But from the time I made the commitment to go I agonized about the moment that now confronted me-saying goodbye to my 2 1/2-year-old son-and about the two-week separation that lay ahead for both of us.
Eli, it turned out, was well prepared for my departure, thanks to the suggestions of my aunt, Gloria Jurkowitz, a child psychologist who directs a parenting center at the Jewish Community Center in Scranton, Pa.
Her words had echoed in my head for days before my departure: ”He`s going to feel abandoned. It`s important that he knows you are going for a purpose, and that the purpose is your work.”
Her advice was to tell Eli about my trip no more than three days before I was to leave and not dwell on it. (Preschoolers can have slightly more notice, school-age children can have up to a week.) She also suggested I make a book to help Eli understand my absence.
The book-”Mama goes on a trip”-made the concept concrete for him. Full of snapshots, it begins, ”Mama is packing her suitcase. She is going on a trip for work.”
From a young child`s perspective, the critical information is on the third, fourth and fifth pages: ”While Mama is gone, everything at home will be the same.”
Make sure that their routine stays as close to normal as possible. Don`t bring in new baby sitters or unknown relatives; don`t pull your child out of day care or preschool. It may not even be a good idea for dad to take time off to care for a child while mom is away. ”The combined effect of an absent mother and a changed routine can be the worst situation,” Field says.
School-age children, whose lives do not revolve around their parents, do better than children under 6, but the parents` attitude toward traveling affects how well a child of any age copes. ”If you are nonchalant, your child fares better. If you make a big production, your kids pick up on your anxiety,” says Field, a professor of pediatrics, psychology and psychiatry.
Professionals refer to this as the parent`s guilt level. Stanley Turecki, a child psychiatrist, says it is the one factor that can unnecessarily mess things up.
”If the mother who travels occasionally has an adaptable 4-year-old and good child care and is consumed by guilt, it`s her problem, not her child`s,” says Turecki, a professor at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City and author of ”The Difficult Child” (Viking, 1989). That mother often projects her guilt onto her child and creates feelings the child doesn`t have.
Similarly, the child whose father travels frequently may be doing just fine. But the mother, lonely and sad herself, may talk too much about missing daddy, initiating a problem for a child where there wouldn`t have been one.
Guilt can get the parent who regularly commutes long distances-a flight attendant, for instance-into unnecessary trouble. It`s not uncommon for her to be lax in discipline when she first arrives home or to undermine the limits the father has set. ”These kids learn they can get away with murder, and they don`t necessarily feel good about it,” says Field.
There are times when a parent`s guilt is appropriate, however. ”If your child is suffering, then you must take appropriate steps,” Turecki says, including modifying your travel schedule, even switching jobs. The child to be sensitive to is one who is temperamental, has an emotional problem or a special need of some kind.
Parents will be pleased to learn that their business travel is not known to have any long-term, negative impact on a child, according to Field`s research. You can expect most children to act out during or after the first trip-perhaps by withdrawing or being more aggressive, with sleep problems or altered eating habits, or with regression in toilet training-but by the third trip, children become competent in handling the separation.
When you are gone, young children, especially toddlers, are apt to think you have abandoned them.
”Too many parents forget a child can see the world only from her vantage point. It`s not so much a question of why mommy or daddy left, but that you are gone. That`s scary to them. They think you have better things to do than be with them,” says Andree Aelion Brooks, an educator and the author of
”Children of Fast-Track Parents” (Viking, 1989).
You can bridge that attitude with school-age children by postponing a trip that interferes with something important to them, such as a school play or a championship Little League game. ”If a child sees that willingness in you, when something important comes up and you can`t postpone, he knows he is still important to you,” says Donald Gair, chairman of the department of child psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine.
Any age child, but especially young ones, may reject you when you return. It is an unconscious behavior, your child`s way of saying, ”You made me unhappy. Now I`m mad at you.”
Don`t take this personally. ”Don`t be angry; don`t withdraw; don`t freak out; don`t panic,” says Field.
Also, don`t overreact. It`s OK to say to your child, ”I know you are mad at me because I went away, but I had to go for my job, and now I`m back. Let`s have a good time.” Turecki advises proceeding slowly. ”Be loving and friendly, but not overwhelming. Respect his pace.”
And then be prepared, as I was, for some acting out. It doesn`t usually happen while you are gone, says Turecki, because children feel safer showing their unhappiness and sadness to you rather than to someone else.
Eli gave me a wonderful, warm reception when he and my husband met me at the airport, and he was loving for several days. But this week has been full of temper tantrums and regressive, cranky behavior.
Perhaps things will be better next week, after he adjusts to the return of my husband, who left on a business trip three days after my return.
But that`s another story. For now, here`s some good advice, learned the hard way: Go to great lengths to avoid back-to-back business trips by alternating parents.
