Who’s getting the child this year, and, how will the child interact, with the various sides of the families, and, are we, doing WHAT’s BEST, for our young here??? Translated…
We often believed, that the New Year’s is a time for family to get together, a time for celebration, but, for some of the kids, it isn’t, the least bit so. With the closing in of the New Year’s, toward this matter-of-fact family reunion, get-together, this tradition, the children from single-parent families would experience some sort of dissonances.
A child who’d just entered into elementary school, whose mom and dad just got a divorce told me, “Dad keeps on drinking a lot recently, and when he got drunk, he’d, cussed mom out.”, I’d asked the child what bad names did dad call mom? She said, he’d said, that she ran away with someone else, messed up the house. I’d told her, to not get hit by the things that dad was throwing, that when dad start throwing things, she should, duck and hide. She’d nodded, then, asked me, “Auntie, can I please have mom for the New Year’s please?”
a mother dropping her son off to his dad’s…not my photograph…
The mother of the child left the father, because of domestic violence.
A friend who was raised in a single-parent home, the parents stopped talking to one another completely, and, toward his parents’ divorce, he’d commented, “They did, work hard, not to say anything awful about one another in front of us, but, as we got older, they’d, stopped, hiding that animosity they’d felt toward each other anymore.” He said, that New Year’s is a troubling time, because he’d needed to head to the separate families of his parents’, and, he’d needed to, watch the portions of food he took in, otherwise, he’d gotten complained on, and might accidentally, disclose whose foods are cooked better than whom.
Another friend who’d lost contact with her father completely, had an even more complicated memory of the New Year’s. As her custody went to her father, she was, banned from contacting her own mother; and waited until the custody went to her mother, she’d started running to and from both houses during the New Year’s. When she was younger, she’d gone back for the supper two days before the Chinese New Year’s, then, returned back to her mother’s the very next day; as she got older, because she didn’t want to see her father, she’d, played dead, and not contacted him. Then, as her father disappeared later, she’d started, rebuilding the relationships with her father’s side of the families, and by then, she could, not get all worked up, and, go to and from during the New Year’s then.
I’d asked her what was going through her mind back then? She said, she felt it was, troublesome, and missed her mom, “When we’re not around, what, would mom be doing? As the adults can’t take care of themselves, the children are left to worry”. But, she’d, cherished the short time she had, to spend with her uncles and aunts, and, she’d stood up for her desires of heading back to visit her uncle and aunts after she married and her husband’s side of the family didn’t want her to visit them again.
Yup, if the adults don’t take good care of themselves, the children are worried. As children see the events unfolded, they would assign their own interpretations to the events, and so, it’s, very important, how the adults explained the things to the children. And oftentimes, the adults would believe, that they shouldn’t, say, not wanting their young, to know the truths early, but, actually, what the children need, is to hear the adults tell them about it. To allow your young to get the chances to understand and express their own feelings on the events, allowing the children to be actively, participating in the events, not just, living with whatever decisions the adults made for them.
So, this, is from the children’s angles, and, a WARNING sign for ALL of you, STUPID parents, don’t THINK, for one nanosecond, that we’re too young to understand, you god DAMN F***ING parents are the clueless ones, as shown by these couple of cases that this counselor had, encountered here! And, who’s gonna get ME this year for the holidays, huh???