How does your spouse's call affect your kids?

I'm wondering if anyone else has problems with their kids' reactions to daddy being gone so much and on such an erratic (to them) schedule. My son is 3, and his whole life his daddy has been gone some nights (my husband is now an R2 in pediatrics). He knows what it means when we tell him Daddy's going to work and will be back tomorrow night, but still takes it really hard. He'll say, 'I want Daddy' during the day, and when Tom's post-call he crawls all over him and won't give him a moment's peace even to change out of his scrubs! Sometimes on call days he gets mad at preschool and hits other kids or is especially needy when I drop him off. I think it doesn't help that q4 is hard for a small child to understand - as soon as he gets used to Daddy being home it's time to go on call again. Do any of you have similar emotional problems from your kids? I know our son is emotionally sensitive and observes everything, so I try not to act sad on call days myself though sometimes it seems unbearable to have to give him up - especially for weekend call!

Just wondering if most kids take call this hard... our son's a real 'Daddy's boy' (maybe partially because Daddy can deny him nothing) so may be more sensitive to it? Any suggestions?

Kaaren

Kaaren,



We went through some similar problems when my husband was doing residency...and even now during fellowship if he is working a lot the kids will be all over him when he gets home. This past weekend he had his first few days off in 4 months and my daughter just couldn't stop talking about the fact that daddy was home to go to the beach and the movies.



Something that we have done in the past when my husband has had q4 or q3 was to meet him for dinner at the hospital. Initially, it seemed a bit akward, but soon his colleagues expected us and we all ate together. It was fun for the kids to eat with "Poppy" and meet his "friends". We also would sometimes go up to his call room with him if it was slow and let the kids see his bed and even on occasion watch the tv.



Any holiday that Thomas worked...Thanksgiving, Christmas...even birthdays...we celebrated with him at the hospital....this included bringing up balloons, cake and presents to his call room when my son turned 4....better than him not being able to take part in this.



This is not something that we announced to the program director and all of his peers. We were discreet...but I don't know that anyone would have gotten too upset about it if they had known.



Kris



PS...I got that info on Parkinsons...I will post it later tonight on the messgageboard. Sorry for the delay.

Kaaren, I think all kids go through some sort of tough time with the schedule. Our boys showed several of the signs in which your going through now. I can say that for us it has gotten tremendously better. Our younger 2 boys feed off of the oldest and if he is upset then the other 2 show it as well. Aaron is old enough to know what is going on and that dad's work is always changing. He also uses it to his advantage ~ staying up a little later, eating in front of the tv. He is also the kid that when told his dad is on call will most of the time pump his fist and say "YEA"! It has not always been that way. What I did when he was giving some trouble was to do some little something with him on the call nights. It can't be anything expensive as they will ask to do it each call night. Coloring on the floor together and then put the picture in dad's bag. Just anything cheesy ~ we almost always call and let the boys tell him goodnight. At that age our boys all paged Richard. He just knew if he got some funky do number it was one of the monsters. I think that it is important for the boys to know that he is there for them, it just might have to be on the phone. I have found another thing that is kind of fun to do with the kids. Get some washable finger paints and let them paint their bodies! The boys love to do this outside and then we wash off with the water hose. You might try this and tell your little one that we can only do this when dad's not home it's just our secret. I hope you get something out of this. If nothing else it should get better with his age ~ Devera