But that doesn’t mean they are not feeling them
Since the separation I started looking at my children differently. Slower. More attentive. Like someone trying to learn a new language without a dictionary. Because I realized something important: children don’t always manage to explain what they feel… but they still show us. Just in different ways. And sometimes the signs are so subtle they could easily go unnoticed by anyone who isn’t truly paying attention.
My older son, for example, used to draw all four of us almost every time. The mum. The dad. The little brother. Him. The whole family. Now he often draws just me and him. Or just me. There are always flowers. A sun. Sometimes a rainbow. As if he is trying to build, on paper, a safe place where he can still breathe more easily.
Other times the signs appear at night.
He has started occasionally wetting the bed. Something that was rare before. And some of those nights have coincided exactly with the days he comes back from his father’s house. I don’t know if it is directly connected. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. But I have learned that with children not everything shows up in words. Sometimes the body speaks first.
He also wakes up some nights speaking in an agitated way. Half lost between sleep and something that feels bigger than him. Sometimes he calls for me. Other times for his dad. Other times I can’t understand what he is saying.
And then there are the moments that break me in silence. Days when, before falling asleep, he whispers to me:
“I am sad because I wanted dad to come back home.”
Or when he tells me he misses his dad… but doesn’t want to go to his house because then he misses me more.
And that sentence echoes inside me for days. Because I realized my son might be feeling something very difficult for such a small child: as if being connected to one of us means having to move a little away from the other. And no child should feel that loving one parent means losing space to love the other.
Sometimes I share these things with their father. Or I used to. But he usually downplays them. He says it is normal. That they are fine. That children adapt. And maybe part of that is true. Children do have an enormous capacity to adapt. Often even more than adults. But adaptation does not mean absence of pain.
And I think one of the most dangerous things in these processes is convincing ourselves that because our children are still playing and laughing, then everything inside them is fine.
So I stopped insisting too much on these conversations. Still, I continue to believe it is worth paying attention to these signs. Not to dramatize. Not to live in constant alert. But because our children deserve to be seen even in what they cannot yet explain.
Maybe that is why my older son looks so much for those moments when we are all together. Small opportunities to bring his world back into one piece.
At the beginning of the separation he did this in a way that was both innocent and desperate. One time he locked himself in his room to prepare a “surprise” for us. When he let us in, he had lined up four pillows on the floor. He explained where each of us should lie down. Him. His brother. His dad. Me. All of us side by side inside a “spaceship.”
At the time I smiled. Today I understand that maybe it wasn’t just a game. It was an attempt to keep the whole family inside the same space.
And then there are the seemingly small questions.
“Mom, this car is ours, right?”
Even when he already knows the answer.
But it is never about the car. Or about objects. It is about understanding if there are still things that belong to all four of us. Things that survived the change.
And the most striking thing is realizing that even my younger son, just one year old, seems to feel things he cannot yet explain.
Since his father left home he has started seeking the breast much more. Especially when he comes back from his father’s house. He stays longer clinging to me. He asks for more comfort. More closeness. More presence. It could be coincidence. It could also be related to the constant illnesses of these months. But maybe it is not only that. At school they also say he has been more agitated.
And sometimes I think how strange it is that babies don’t even understand the concept of separation… but maybe they understand absence perfectly. Change. Silence. The disruption of routine. The emotional emptiness in the adults around them.
Children feel far more than we imagine. Even when they keep playing. Even when they laugh. Even when they seem “fine”. And maybe one of the hardest parts of parenting is this: realizing we cannot fully protect our children from pain. Not even when we do everything with love.
But I also believe something else.
The signs are not only there to scare us. They are there to bring us closer. To remind us to look more carefully. To give more comfort. More time. More listening. More patience. Because sometimes a child does not say “I am sad”.
But draws a different house. Asks for more hugs. Closeness. Asks questions they already know the answer to. Or creates a pillow spaceship where the whole family still fits.
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