3d ago

Raising a toddler away from home

So, I'm not sure if this is the place to post this. But my family is from a rural community and has to travel to see specialists for my daughter. On our most recent trip, my wife's water broke. The doctor says we may not travel as home is far away and the baby will be early. We don't have a support system here, but our families are trying their best to be here. Financially, we are fine, but I'm worried about our daughter(3) being away from her home, school, family, and friends. We have communicated to our daughter the situation, that we cannot leave til the baby is ready, try to be positive and try to keep her active and entertained but obviously she still misses home. Does anyone have any suggestions to create stability and a healthy environment for my daughter?

edit: Sorry, im a bit flustered, so I forgot to mention. The baby may come anytime or passed June, we've been living out of hotels, and our lodging is covered by the government.

2 comments

Hey fellow dad, that's a tough spot to be in. Especially tough for a toddler, because a month or two feels a lot longer to them than it does to us adults.
A few things you can try, though:
Try to maintain regular routines and "rituals", especially ones that you can replicate from home.
Send messages (either digitally or through snail mail) to her friends and school. Include pictures of where you're staying or other fun things you're doing. If it's appropriate, you could ask her friends' parents or teachers to send messages back.
Talk about the things you'll do when you get back home. Encourage her to draw pictures of things that she misses and talk about them. It might seem counter-intuitive to focus on those things, but it's better to talk about them to allow her to process all her emotions.

Try not to "blame" the baby for why she can't keep her old life - it's hard enough having your family dynamics change so massively going from solo child to having a baby sibling, having it be extra tumultuous because of the baby can really strain their early relationship and be a bigger risk of her acting out or regressing to get her old life back. So you're not staying here because of the baby; you're here because you and mom decided it would be nice to have an extra long vacation and be near the hospital.