AFTER MEETINGS WITH THE FATHER, THE CHILD IS OUT OF BALANCE

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

- "After every meeting with the father, the child seemed to be replaced, the impression that the devil is settling in him. He is capricious, grimaces, does not obey, does not want to go to bed," says the mother of a five-year-old boy. “I will no longer let him (father) and close to her (daughter), it is not known what is happening, but it’s not my child who comes back to me - it yells, breaks toys, beats my grandmother, and is hostile to me,” complains the mother of a four-year-old girl. Such behavior of the child after meeting with the father, who lives separately, is often the reason for the resistance of mothers to meet the child with the father.

One or two days after meeting with the father, the child again becomes "ordinary", obedient and sweet. In some children, mood changes are observed not only after the meeting, but also several days before the meeting with the father.

This excitement is explained by the fact that the child finds himself in a situation of completely new combinations of relationships. To see the father is to abandon the mother, to return to the mother (to find the mother again) is to leave the father. In addition, the children add an anxious uncertainty: "Will I see my father again?", "Will something happen to the father?", "Will he want to see me again?" The change of object on the days of meetings with the father, again activates in the child the experience of divorce, and with it the typical reactions of anger and fear. As well as a sense of guilt: children experience the departure from mother to father and back, as the betrayal of one of them.

From the memories of an adult woman whose parents divorced when she was 5 years old. “Every time I returned home after meeting with my father, my mother asked me how I had spent my time. These questions were unbearable to me. Because I did it very well, but it seemed to me that it might offend my mother. " During this story, I saw how shame made a woman look at the floor, and the color of shame flooded her face. In this case, the girl experienced a burning sense of shame that she felt good with her dad, for the fact that she could feel good with the man who had done so cruel to her mother. From the client's recollections, the rest of the day after meeting with her father was poisoned for her by her mother's question, which plunged into her intolerable shame. In this case, the mother did not in any way seek to deteriorate the emotional state of the child, however, the girl was well aware that her mother's unhappiness was associated with her father's behavior, thus, the girl simply had no right to be happy from communicating with the person who made her mother unhappy. In another case, a jealous and envious mother, who saw her daughter as a rival, asked questions with the aim of “extorting” about the child’s happiness, in order to punish her later, saying at an opportunity: “You don’t like it with me? You were so happy with your daddy. Can I take you to him? Will you wait for him under the door? " Knowing this maternal cruelty, the child psychologically "twisted" and he, returning after meeting with his father to his mother, staged long and vivid "performances".

In some children, open anger towards the mother, or its disguised manifestations upon returning to her, are not expressed in words reproaches - “It's all your fault!”, “If it weren't for you!”, “You took my father away from me! "," Why are you so cruel!"

Some mothers believe that it is better to limit the child's contacts with the father for a while, "to let the child calm down and come to his senses." However, the termination of meetings with the father can confirm the child's fear of the loss of the father, increase the feeling of uselessness and provoke maladjustment. In this case, the idea that "after a while" the child "will calmly resume the relationship with the father" is illusory. In contrast, acceptance of the typical arousal in these situations tends to gradually diminish.