Behaviour: feelings of loss

It is often said that what the child whose parents have separated needs to know is that, irrespective of the parents' feelings for each other, they have and can expect to have in the future, each parent's enduring love.

Fear and upset at the loss of love are fundamental emotions that we all share. When parents are in the midst of a separation they have to deal with their own disappointment, rage and grief at the end of what was once a loving relationship. That reminder, as adults, of early childhood feelings of loss, makes it particularly difficult for parents to cope with the thought of the young child's feelings around the time of separation.

Parents often try to protect their child from knowing what is going on in the hope that they are so young that they will not notice anything has happened. The thought is that if the separation happens before the children remember much it will be easier for them: if they cannot remember Daddy how can they miss him? Parents may disguise what is happening, perhaps say that Daddy has gone away on a trip.

However, it is now known that babies and very young children are particularly vigilant of the emotions and behaviours of those around them and that memories of the relationships of those close to them, different from the later memories that can be pictured, will be stored forever, although not in a way that is consciously accessible to them later. The child, however young and apparently unaffected, will notice that a parent is missing.

Three-year-old Fred's father had come and gone several times during his mother's pregnancy and during his early life, never staying more than a few months. He was now living in Paris. Fred and his mother had recently spent the summer there, visiting him once, with mother trying to obtain financial support through the courts. Later in the year Fred was suspended from nursery because of violent outbursts, which his mother thought were because of a chemical imbalance. It was only when mother and Fred were seen together by a therapist and Fred started to refer to Paris and his trip there that mother began to realise that his absent father may have been important to him.

MAKING IT HAPPEN

Not only are children of this age particularly vigilant, they also have a tendency to feel they have the capacity to make things happen. If they see Mummy or Daddy upset they can easily feel it is because of something they have done. This, combined with their burgeoning imaginations, can dangerously blur the boundary between fantasy and reality. Indeed the child's fantasies are often much worse than anything he is actually experiencing in his environment. For example, angry feelings may become confused with angry actions, and if the angry feelings coincide with Daddy going away it is easy for the child to conclude it was his angry feelings that made Daddy leave. For the child this can make experiencing angry feelings with other people rather problematic. He may start to feel anxious and inhibited, or guilty, and start behaving in a way that will invite people to punish him.

Four-year-old Michael's parents had been unhappy since he was born. His granny had died when he was two and his father had moved out shortly afterwards. He visited regularly at weekends, although the transitions were acrimonious. After one of these visits Michael had lashed out at his mother at bedtime and scratched her face, drawing blood.

Michael was terrified he had killed her. He became unhappy at nursery school, complaining of tummy ache, and said he was being bullied. The staff said he was not concentrating and began to talk of putting him on the special needs register. In his therapy he was able to express his wish that his mummy and daddy would get back together and have a baby like his friends' parents. He and his therapist were able to talk about how sad it was that they could not and he was able to acknowledge his grief without feeling he was to blame, while his feelings about nursery school became more positive.

CONFLICT OF LOYALTY

As can be seen from the above example, other people's angry feelings can also become problematic. A child may fear losing both parents. Young children are beginning to relate to more than one person simultaneously. They are learning that it is possible to love both parents together, and that it is possible for each parent to love them and their partner as well. If the parents separate just as this more inclusive pattern of relating is beginning to emerge in the child, there is bound to be disruption. The child may regress to an earlier level of behaviour, becoming alternately clingy and hostile and only able to have exclusive relationships.

An outcome of loving more than one person simultaneously may be the conflict of loyalty that a child can feel, and this becomes particularly problematic if the parents expose the child to their resentful feelings about one another. The child will feel pulled in different directions in the transitions as they try to adjust to the other resented spouse/loved parent with all the burden of guilt about betrayal. Indeed, the transition between parents is often a time of peak tension. The goodbye between the separated parent and child at that moment encapsulates the permanent underlying dissolution of the family unit.

Mary's parents separated when she and her sibling were two and four. There was much bitterness and father attacked mother physically in front of the children when she refused him access to them until he paid her more financial support. A third person took over the handovers of the children in a neutral space for several months until things settled down between the parents.

For some time Mary was very clingy with her mother, complaining that she did not want to leave her, sitting on her lap and wrapping herself round her neck. However, once with her father she was perfectly happy. It was only when Mary's mother began to realise that her daughter overheard her telephone conversations with friends about her resentment of her ex-husband that she made more of an effort to keep the conversations private and to actively support her daughter's separate and loving relationship with her father.

This article is based on a Nursery World 'Behaviour' series by psychologists at the Anna Freud Centre in north London, a registered charity, offering treatment, training and research into emotional development in childhood