When daddy is away

At the moment my husband is away for two weeks on business overseas. These trips are hard on the whole family but we've discovered that they are particularly hard on our very perceptive little boy. The first long trip my husband did was when CG was around 13mnths old and all sorts of odd things happened. He was very grumpy, he struggled to sleep at night and during the day and he freaked out whenever I was out of sight.

It was around this time that a friend to try role playing with him. So we used Duplo men and played games about the daddy flying away on an airplane and the mommy and baby staying behind. Then the daddy would come back. This he led quite a bit but the time period of two weeks is interminable to a little one. This is when I hit on two other ideas. I'm really mot sure how I came up with them but they work really well in helping CG understand that daddy is coming home and when he will be back. They also help him deal with some of his separation anxiety.

I make a simple calendar (table in Word) with a block for each day daddy is away. Then every morning we stick a sticker on the day that has passed. There is a picture of daddy printed on the day he is due to come home.

We have a big world map stuck up in his bedroom with id size photos of CG and daddy. We stick daddy's photo on the map in the country he's in and we stick CG's photo in south Africa where we are. I started this just as a way to show him where daddy is and that the hasn't just disappeared but it ended up becoming CG's bedtime ritual which he invented. Each night score pray time he goes to the map and kisses the photo of daddy and then gives his own photo a kiss just like he's saying good night when daddy is here. This is very sweet with the added bonus that he seems to sleep better.

So although we hate the times when daddy is away we are finding ways to cope.

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