Where is everything's mom?

[sakeraki]

My oldest son is obsessed with grouping things and living things into families. He looks at a three rocks of different sizes and decide that one is the dad, the other is the mom, and the little one is the baby. Cars, books, crayons, balls, everything has to have a mom, a dad plus one or two babies. He didn't do this when his mom was alive, but it didn't seem strange when it started.

 

Since last week he began to add a new angle to this. He asks where everything's mom is. We saw a couple of squirrels run by the yard, and instead of getting excited as he always gets, he makes a strange expression and asks in his little whiny voice "but, where is their mom?"  He was greeting a toddler at the park and he comes running to me asking "where is the baby's mom?" (she was sitting three steps away from the child).

 

I don't know. Its just a question, but its not a good one. He asked a thousand times where his mom was, for the first three or four months, and then nothing. No more questions, no more mentioning of his mom to me or to the preschool teacher, no more truisms like "my mom was in an accident" and "my mom was hurt and then she died". It was all gone.

 

Now I've got this. A mild freak out every time he sees something, anything, and has to know where the mother is.

[SoVerySad]

Aw, what a sweet little guy you have there. It sounds to me like maybe he's hoping these animals and other children still have their moms or he's trying to see if there are others out there like him. Losing a parent is such a painful thing for our kids to have to go through. It is hard to understand, just as it is hard for us to understand. I'm not sure how old your son is, but if you feel it reaches a level where you'd like to have him seen by a professional, I highly recommend play therapy or a grief group with other kids his age.

[linda5]

Awe, that just breaks my heart.  I agree with Too Soon, perhaps play therapy with a counselor would be good for him.

[daysofelijah]

My just turned four year old was only 9 months old when her dad died. She has gone through stages of being fascinated with all things dad. She loves tv shows with a strong dad character and watches them over and over. She will honestly blurt out that her dad is dead to other kids she comes across, because that's the only reality she's known. It's hard to be the only one who has to deal with things like that. Not too many people know what it feels like to raise a child who will never know a parent because of death.

[sakeraki]

I'm not sure of how to evaluate his need to be seen by therapist. He'll be four on April, do therapists see people this young? I imagine they do, but it seems strange.

 

Most of the time he seems very happy and carefree. He did blurt out facts about his mom's death to other kids, but they are too young to feel intimdated, so they just looked on and said nothing. My son seemed satisfied by just announcing to others that his mom had died. It did stop abruptly, but nothing bad came after that... save for this "where is its/his/her mom?" stage, which bothers me more than it seems to bother him.

[Lisa]

Sounds like his way of coping. Little heart breaker you have there.