Every single day I worry about my six year old son. I worry about if I am saying the right things to him about his father, I worry he will resent me down the road, I worry that he will hate me.
As hard as it is, I still know what I did was the best thing I ever could have done for him. I kept him from being preyed on. I kept him from being injured, and I kept him safe.
My predator and I battled for two years in court, between family and criminal. All I wanted was to ensure our child was never left alone with him. My request? Supervised visitation through a third party facility, one my predator never took advantage of. I took my son to CASA (Child Adolescent Sexual Assault) Center and I was told that they think I was able to stop my predator in his tracks, that they think my son may have been being groomed by his father. What an awful feeling to know that he could have done the same to his own child, but I stopped it. My son at the time was three just about to turn four.
My son is now six, and although I am pleased not to have to send my child off with his dad to be alone, my child still misses his father. So what did I tell my son as to why all of a sudden his father disappeared? I told him that his daddy is sick. I told him his daddy doesn’t have a flu but that his head is sick and sometimes that takes time to heal. It’s not a lie. To hurt people the way he has, mentally there is something wrong with him. CASA said I did a great job explaining it to him and that as he gets older and with age appropriate conversations I will eventually be able to tell him that his father just stopped. In reality he abandoned his son.
I worry about the future conversations with my son. How will he understand what I did was to protect him from his own father hurting him. How will he understand his father giving up on any sort of communication between them. I worry, but it’s okay. I show my child pictures of his daddy, I tell him his daddy loves him and misses him and that when he gets better he will come see him. I hope his father gets the help he needs, I hope his father will never be alone with our child but that he wants to see him again someday, but I don’t know if that will ever happen before my child becomes an adult. So for now, his dad is sick.