3 Year Olds Have Feelings Too

I have been working to be proactive when it comes to Jane’s visits with the boys. And I mean that in the most positive and compassionate way. Before I came she hardly ever saw them – maybe once a month. I arrived and she had her baby, and she started calling more often. I took a weekend to read through the divorce papers so that I could understand legalities a bit better in their situation. They have joint legal custody, but he has sole physical custody.

I’ve had to come and think about things… a lot of things. Is this “sudden want” to see the boys:

• Because she’s on maternity leave and has time to see them (before she had the baby her available days were Thursday because that was her day off.)
• Because I’m here and she feels that she suddenly has competition
• Because perhaps, there’s a chance that she’s actually changed and WANTS to see them because she wants to. (And I say this because the way she’s presented taking them was as if she was doing us a favor by taking them off of our hands.)
  

My concerns with this “sudden want” to see the boys is, “Is it going to last?”

I suggested working trying to set up a schedule, and then the boyfriend brought up the whole maternity time off ending at some point. That terrified me. I don’t want to get the boys hopes up if it’s all going to end. I’ve already seen it happen once. And it broke my heart to have to tell them that they actually weren’t going to be seeing Jane that weekend.

So we’re just playing it week by week, month by month, holiday by holiday. I don’t know if she was going to ask for them for the Thanksgiving holiday. But I asked the boyfriend to find out if she would like them for a couple of days during their week off. And I guess she said yes, so I’m hoping that she won’t change her mind.

Back on topic, I have tried to be proactive about it. I’ve been trying to remind the boyfriend that I need to be made aware of what decisions have been made when it comes to them visiting her. I don’t want to make plans only to find out that plans were already made. [Refer to “And Then I Exploded.”] That is communication between us. However, this post refers to her lack in communication with us. She likes to drop things on us the day of.

Jane was supposed to take the boys this weekend. Come Friday, I find out she only wanted two of them. She said it was because she didn’t have room in her car for all of them to visit her father this weekend. However, after the boyfriend picked them up he said that she was talking about continuing only taking two at a time. Now, she did just have a baby and I understand that, but do the boys?

We chose to keep Younger Boy with us, since she didn’t say which two she preferred to have. We chose to keep him because he’s still potty training and the last time he stayed at her house he allegedly finger painted with his poop. (Which he has never done here, but I’m not going to say she’s a liar.)

All I can say is that it broke my heart when the boyfriend and Middle Boy went to go pick up Older Boy without him. He knew that he was supposed to go to her house. And (while we are working with him on this) Middle Boy isn’t very common sense smart yet when it comes to gloating about getting to do things others don’t/not teasing people about getting to do things others do. They walked out the door and Younger Boy sat there, on the ground with the saddest look on his face. Head looking down, hands clasped in his lap. And one lone tear trickled down his cheek.

It took a lot of strength not to cry myself. I beckoned to him and we sat there. I wiped his tear and told him I loved him. (And I know that I’m not replacing her, I never will and I don’t intend to. I like to hope that we can have a relationship of our own.) He was soon smiling, and that was important to me.

The boyfriend and I decided to make it a fun weekend for Younger Boy. We took him out to Pier 39 to see the sea lions and the big hit with him was the pigeons (the kitcheons). We all had donuts for breakfast in our bed and watched cartoons all morning.

I know that he’s only three, and he may or may not remember it. But I hope that he’ll remember that he is loved, and he is wanted, and that he had a good time with us. He has feelings too, and those feelings can be hurt while us adults are too busy trying to 1) figure life out, 2) thinking about ourselves and 3) make our life work the way we want it to.