It’s amazing isn’t it that the father is expected to travel across the world without his child but the mother cries if he’s away for any length of time and we shouldn’t judge her for that?
He is a child the responsibility of how his adult mother is going to cope without him shouldn’t be on his shoulders.
When I first split from my ex I had family telling me that I should be putting my foot down over allowing my DC to visit their grandparents with their father and how three nights away from me was too much. I didn’t.
As time has gone on my DS has struggled to be away from home but actually has struggled more in terms of being away with his dad as will happily go off on school trips etc. It would never have been right for me to start crying to add to his feelings of not wanting to go. I have certainly walked away from my ex’s house and burst into tears when out of sight/earshot, but that was my issue to deal with and not his.
Since getting divorced I have been diagnosed with a life limiting illness and I absolutely know that my DS worries about me and what will happen if I’m taken ill while he’s away. What I have had to do is to give him reassurance that he can go off and have a good time and that medics, my partner, my family will all look out for me. He should never ever be made to feel responsible for me to the extent it limit his life as well.
And let’s be a bit uncomfortably honest here. There’s a fairly good chance that I might die as a result of this illness. And if that happens and I have spent the last x years alienating my child from their other parent and making them feel that I am reliant on them, how much more are they going to struggle if I’m suddenly not there any more?
We have to bring children up to be independent beings in their own right.
There are plenty of adult children of emotionally over-invested parents on the relationships boards and the damage to those relationships now that they are adults is very obvious.