To leave children for 3 and a half months?

[elbigbx]

Hi

Would like opinions on my current situation as I've had mixed feedback from personal relationships.

I start my second year of university (Law degree) in September and we have been told we have the option for a work placement abroad for half of the academic year, which is just over 3 months.

I'm a single mum to 2 daughter's who will be 7 and 4 at the time. I share custody with their dad and he is very open about the opportunity and has said he would have the girls if it came to it.

AIBU to take up this opportunity? I can pick anywhere in the world to secure a placement (depending on if I get accepted of course). I don't think this opportunity will present itself again but I also can't shake off the fact that I would be leaving my 2 girls behind who are my everything.

Please let me know what you would do in my situation. Luckily I've got a few months to really think about it.

Thanks

Early years expert here (and former lawyer). No way should you choose to do this. So damaging for your children - neither will understand why you have left them for so long, and it will have a lasting impact on their sense of security. Expect bed wetting, tantrums, difficult behaviour at school. I’m sorry, but once you have children, your life changes and they have to be your priority. You are still doing an amazing thing for yourself and for them by qualifying as a lawyer - but unless you can take them with you, you shouldn’t even be considering going abroad, sorry.

There is a great deal to be admired in someone who is ambitious. Hardworking. Dedicated. Focussed. Creative. Rounded. Successful. Adventurous. Eager to learn. And who has clearly been a great mother, concerned with her dc's upbringing and with effective co-parenting.

To label making the most of her educational opportunities as simply selfish is small-minded. To say a mother must always sacrifice her ambitions for her dc, even when the dc have another loving parent to care for them, is both small-minded and vindictive.

Yes. Exactly this.

Actual parent whose actual spouse did this.
Children were fine as being cared for by their PARENT.
But hey, fathers can never be a full time parent, right? Only mothers.

I think it’s a no brainer.
Go!
You are in a situation with shared custody. You can FaceTime every day and if you are only two hours away and get cheap flights you can travel back once a month.
If you were a man it wouldn’t even be pondered.
My god - the responses! It’s for a couple of months not two years.
Your kids will be fine and it will be a fun time with dad for them.

What an opportunity to have & what a dilemma too.
Personally as this is a one off & a requirement of an educational course that will lead to better job prospects, which will in turn lead to a better future for your children & yourself I would go for it & I am sure the kids would tell you to go for it too.

Your 7yr old will understand more than the 4yr old but I can guarantee that for them it will be an adventure.
Of course they will miss you & there will be tears BUT they are staying with someone who clearly lives them, they know very well & this is only for a short time.
I would have loved to stay with my dad, friends or family more while growing up but the opportunity never arose.
I was the eldest of 5 so I’d have actually just been happy to stay somewhere separately from my brother & sisters for a while for a break 😂

Sit your girls down now & talk to them now about this possibly happening.
Prepare them for your possibly going away long before the event is actually going to happen rather than dropping it on them a week or two before it happens. This will give them plenty of time to get used to the idea, for you all to talk about it & for you to set up ways to communicate.
You can write, send gifts, talk via video call, just ohone each other & send video & voice messages. Kids are very resilient & they will cope as long as they are prepared for this.

My friend & her son have lots of contact with her family over school holidays, she works in a school so that is her only time
off, but her family live in Manchester & that is 3hrs south of where we live.
During the pandemic she invested in a Facebook Portal & although I am not the greatest fan of video calling i have to say it is amazing, especially when you have younger kids who can’t always sit still, easily.
She had a very active 3yr old at the time so getting him to sit still for a regular video or phone call was a nightmare because of his age & attention span.
He just wanted to jump around, show everyone what he was doing - his moves as he calls them - on screen & take them to his toys but a standard video call just didn’t allow for him to do that. The portal tracked his movements, went with him as he moved so the interaction flowed nicely & he really got to interact with his cousins, grandparents, aunts & uncles, that they couldn’t go see, so much more naturally. They all wrote to each other, sent presents & planned their next get together a for when the craziness had all died down.
I discovered these dolls a few days ago…
www.britishmade.gifts/collections/mini-me … when my friend told me about her daughter say goodbye to the boy she is going to marry & is BEST BEST BEST friends in the world with.
He is moving to Australia & both kids, age 8, are heartbroken but now they have these cushions of each other to keep them company.
Honestly the kids are like peas in a pod & have such a bond that they, the kids themselves, have promised to marry each other when they get older.
The lad has said he’ll come back to England for my friends little girl when he is old enough & even asked her dads permission to marry here & everything at their last meeting.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the house on that last meeting.

To sum my waffle up… You are not abandoning or leaving your children forever. Yes it will be hard & different but you are doing this to provide a better future for your children & yourself. The children are going to be staying with family they know, love & are happy to stay with so personally I would go for it. 3.5months will be over before you know it & that reunion will be the best.

Exactly. It is not like this lady is abandoning her kids into the social care system for this opportunity.
I really hope she goes for it & would love to know how everything goes with the course etc. I feel invested in her future now 😁

@Grrrrdarling many posters who have experience in this area have said it doesn’t improve career prospects and it isn’t a requirement of the course. It’s just being a student in a different country for 2 terms. Nice maybe but not necessary

Don’t you dare abandon this opportunity because of the Mumsnet ’you can’t have a life once you have kids’ brigade who have massive mum guilt. They profess they need to be there at their kids beck & call every second of the day then whine that they never get to do anything for themselves or anything they want to do in life because their kids need them so much!

Reach for this opportunity with both arms & go for it. You will never get the opportunity again.
The kids will potentially never get this opportunity to spend so much time with dad again either.
Make this a positive in all of your lives 😍
I would love to hear how everything goes & wish you all the best.

I don’t suffer mum guilt but I suffer life guilt. The traumatic birth of my daughter left me disabled & now I am a shell of the person, physically, I was before I went through that.
There are so many things I will now never be able to do but my blessing is we both survived the event & I have a child I was told 12years earlier I would never have.
life has a habit of throwing opportunities & curve balls at you when you least expect them. Only you can decide how to roll with those choices.
GOOD LUCK

Doesn’t make it wrong for this lady to go & have this experience 😊
I’m all for her taking the bull by the horns.

@Grrrrdarling I’m not saying she shouldn’t go, but to dress it up as furthering her career etc is wrong.

@DucklingDaisy

Have you missed the bit about how the care of these kids is already split 50/50? These girls will be with their father, not out on the street.

their dad is every bit as capable of looking after them as Op.

I simply don’t buy into the mumsnet trope that when you have kids all your own hopes, dreams and ambitions have to take a backseat until the kids about 25!

I’m thinking that either I’ve not worded my comment every well or you have misunderstood it.👍
This is an opportunity & if it was dad or a man with the opportunity OP’s question wouldn’t even be asked.
Unless we have a crystal ball no one knows what opportunities will arise from this opportunity OP has before her.
Personally I think she should go for it, whether it furthers her career or not. 😘

And so what if it not about furthering her career?!
so what if it’s just about the opportunity to experience a different culture etc?

some people on here would be like ‘oh OP can do that when the kids are all grown up’ but to me that is so presumptuous! None of us have any guarantees that we will be alive and well next year never mind eighteen years time. You have to live your life now, when you can! Don’t postpone it.

I have read OPS posts, not TFT.
OP - do it. Your DDs will be loved and cared for, you'll see them eow, and you can facetime them. 3 months is nothing. If you go in Feb, you'll be back before summer. Being a mum doesn't mean you give up being a person. When the DD are older, they'll barely remember it, and they'll have a qualified, happy mum who they'll be proud of.
Do it.

I wouldn't. It's too long, if it was 3 weeks perhaps. You will never get that time back with your children.

@LuckySantangelo35 would you say the same if it is a man? To me it doesn’t seem much more than a glorified holiday and I can’t imagine many posters on here would be impressed if a dad of young children announced he was going on a 3 month holiday and expecting the mum to take up the slack of childcare

One poster mentions that her parents cared for her child when she travelled abroad. Unpicking the detail, I think that in one way, young/active retired parents might inspire more confidence in me than a father who works full time and who, for the sake of argument, has a fledgling romantic relationship to service. I don't know if the above applies to the dad, but I do see that a sudden work or relationship crisis might make it hard for him. And with grandparents, that's a duo, not one person. But how many other family members can come to help and stay over, is a factor we don't yet know. I would say, the more, the better.

For other reasons outlined by other posters, I think the absence might be too unsettling - whoever cares for the children- and the wisest course might be to decline - just in case. I say this, considering also, that other posters, who know the training, say that the trip isn't a requirement of the training and doesn't bring tangible career benefits.

I can speak from the perspective of a child who was left with grand parents regularly, both my parents went overseas for months at a time, regularly from the ages of 4-16 years. I would be not recommend it, but as an adult I have certainly got over it. It is your decision to make ultimately. Will you resent your children if you did not take the opportunity?

@toomuchlaundry

if the man was usually a proactive parent who pulled his weight 50/50 and was given OP’s opportunity then yeah I probs would to be honest. With the expectation that he would take the kids whilst OP had her own holiday.

@Mouk

shell not get that time back with her children but she may never get an opportunity like this again either!

she has had months upon months of time with her kids and will have months upon months to come. Missing out on 3.5 of those months in order to have the opportunity of a lifetime is an absolute no brainer to me!

My culture is similar; also had such experiences in the days before internet. Not traumatised or resentful. Also, my dad was a pediatrician, so presumably knew something about trauma and was willing to risk it. I ended up repeating this with my own DC. Global living sometimes demands separation; most families cope fine without all the drama on this thread. And POC often don't have the luxury of having the family together all the time. That's a luxury reserved for white people!

I find a lot of the posters are possibly projecting their own fears:

Not all of us are homesick when travelling
Not all of us hate making new friends in other countries and will sit in our rooms all day to avoid this
Not all of our children are so easily traumatised, esp when it's only 24 days without the OP
Not all of us think that we need to be around if our kids have a bad day, as long as another parent is
Not all of us think that kids need to be top priority all the time everytime

God MN is so wet sometimes.

Absolutely go for it! It not that long in the grand scheme of things. Go somewhere you can get back for visits at weekends. I would also really struggle with it, and it will be hard but it's an opportunity. What advice would you give your girls if one day they had that opportunity?