So ds is only 2 and his dad and I separated because I found out he'd been using/distributing iioc. At the moment there's no contact between him and ds and apparently he's told the sw (who is genuinely so useless) that he doesn't plan to take me to court to argue this. Normally speaking I'm of the opinion that parental relationships are very important even when things have gone wrong but in this instance I still don't really know what I'm dealing with yet and I probably won't know the extent of things for quite some time. So for now I've been refusing contact until I get a better idea of the event of what he's done.
We're staying with family at present and I didn't take any photos etc from the house apart from what was in ds bedroom and I haven't been able to put anything up yet as there hasn't been space.
However last night he saw photos of his dad and then didn't sleep well (not necessarily related) and it got me wondering if I should have a photo up in his bedroom.
I'm torn because on one hand I don't want to make his dad a mystery to him, it is part of ds family makeup and at some point stbxh may fight me for contact and win so I don't want to make that worse for ds, but then at the same time I feel very uncomfortable with the idea of having his photo in ds room given the nature of what he's done and the way ds might process this/ feel about it as he gets older... I don't want to glamourise his dad or endear him to ds as obviously ds will need to learn what he's done in age appropriate ways but I ultimately want to do right by ds even if that is emotionally hard for me. It sounds awful but even if he'd murdered someone I think I'd feel less conflicted about this but it's because his offences are against children specifically.
Does anyone who's child's parents have done something awful have any advice?
There's nothing to suggest that ds has ever been harmed by his dad in any way, I was completely and totally blindsided that he was even capable of this so as far as I know the only distress ds has been through is the sudden loss of contact with his dad, losing all his pets and now having to move and stay with family.