Well, I think that extended separations happen in most infant or toddlers lives at some point when we think about all the possibilities. So it might be even something as simple as work travel. I remember, not when I was an infant so much, but when I was younger, my dad did a lot of travel for work, and he was home, and then he wasn't home, and it might be for a week or more at a time. So it was not just a daily saying goodbye to him, but I might not sesee him for a week and I was old enough to understand that. But it would be different for an infant or toddler to have that work travel families, you know, divorce or split up households, which the question then is even, will they continue to see that other key adult in their life or not? Sometimes that means they don't ever see that person again. So to keep that in mind, if there's a split in a relationship, but if they do now, the relationships, the rituals of routines, everything changes. Deployment, military deployment is another one that happens for a lot of children, and that's a little more traumatic sometimes depending on what happens, because it's harder to predict when it's it's going to end. And incarceration, foster care, hospitalization. You have a parent who has to be hospitalized for a while, or a key caregiver in the home, or even your key your family child care provider, right, suddenly has to be hospitalized and that person, that key attachment figure, is no longer there for you as a child. So those are some examples of extended separations that can come up for young children in their lives, and now, when we think about infants and toddlers again, thinking from that child's perspective, they don't understand what is going on, right, right? They don't understand and we have to be really careful how we talk about it, because the infants aren't going to do this, but the toddlers, and certainly preschoolers, tend to think it's their fault. They make a connection with something they did last time they saw this person or that they're the cause of you know, toddlers are very egocentric, particularly about them. They're learning all about themselves, and they're a very important person, and so they think they cause sometimes these separations. So we have to be really mindful of the language we use about it. And even with infants, what we also need to be mindful of is they're feeling this, even if they don't understand it. This important person, and this is where talking about attachment, as we did before, and we have a great we have a wonderful self study on that by the way, we learn all about attachment, but thinking of that attachment figure suddenly being gone, what has happened? And there's no understanding from an infant's perspective, so we have to be aware that that's going to affect children in different ways. So their sense of security is going to be less. They're just going to lose that sense of security. For infants, it might be, you know, or toddlers too, you might seesome regression or slower development for a little while, as they're just, they're needing safety, they're needing to feel secure again, and they aren't feeling it. They can't comfort themselves like they used to be able to, or they just can't be comforted. Even though you used the work to do certain things with them, they might not work anymore for comforting them. They they're mourning a loss. They can't even describe it, the baby can't describe, a toddler can say "where's mommy" and an infant can't do that. They're missing that mom. So we want to have, I would say, if you know, there's a couple key things to remember about these kinds of separations. One is that usually there's other stresses in the family that go along with this. So it might be that they just have to change the routines that someone else is now in charge of different things, that there's no longer certain things that are done in the family. It might be the space that you're in might change. You might have to live somewhere else, whether that's because of household breaking up, or maybe now someone's coming to live with you to help the other parent out. So the all those kind of stresses that are coming along with this, and maybe if something traumatic happens, there's a death or a serious illness or some other grief involved, so there could be trauma associated with it for the family as well as for the child, but there's certainly stress, usually some sort of stress involved in this that's not just about the absence for the child, but in the family, there's some stress. So they're having to figure out how to handle this change in the family, not just for the child. And then some of these absences are predictable. We know when they're going to end. We know how long they're going to be deployment. We kind of, you know, there's some predictability work travel. There's some predictability. Even with divorce. There might are spilled up. There might be some predictability with illnesses or deaths or foster care incarceration, we can't predict certain things, so there's for that adult, there's that unpredictability that's in the mix for that key caregiver that's still with the child, or the key caregivers that are still with the child, so They're feeling the stress of that as well. And then there's a question of, how do we talk about this so the parents, the families, know it's coming or not? Some of these things, again, you might know they're going to happen, and other things might be unexpected. So when possible and you know it's coming, that's when you have the conversation with the family about preparing. And so thinking about how to prepare the child both in terms of what are we going to do in both places to make them feel as safe and secure and as much predictability and consistency, as possible but also, what are we going to say? Now, again, with nfants, we're not going to describe what's happening, because they aren't going to understand that, but we can name the emotions, which is really important. And again, people sometimes forget, babies have emotional responses to all this, and they're feeling ours. So just naming that missing. You know, you miss your mom, you miss your dad. Dr Carol Siegel did a wonderful workshop on this, and I also am borrowing from Dr Rebecca Schlafer, who did a workshop on incarceration. You know, keep it simple, but for infants, just you miss so and so, they will come back. Or if you don't know that's happening, you don't have to say that, but I will keep you safe those kind of words that we sometimes use as trauma. I will help you till they come back, just naming it for those infants. The toddlers you can talk about, you know, this is I know it's making you sad to miss mommy. I know it's making you sad to miss Daddy. They had to go do something important, and they're trusting me to stay with you until they come back. So if someone left them, drop them off, you can say, and so and so it's going to be picking you up again. I'm going to be taking care of you. Mommy wanted me to take care of you during the day. And sometimes kids are afraid to be happy, afraid to play. Those toddlers is who we are talking about giving them it's okay.,Mommy said it's okay for you to play while you wait, if they if they need that permission. If you're watching a kid who's normally going to go get engaged, and you're seeing their their they seem to be reluctant. That might be a cue to you that they're feeling like, oh, I I've got to just wait around for Mommy to return. Like I can't be happy. I can't be, you know, feel anything but sadder. I just need to sit with you and wait for her to come back. It's okay to play while you wait for Mommy to come back. It's okay to go play with so and so. It's okay to sit with me. It's okay and I'm here to keep you safe. Those messages are really important. And you know, the toddler is fearing, you know, somehow they caused it. So you really just want to say a little bit about that they're gone and and they love you kind of thing. And it's you don't say it's not something you did, but you want to just watch out to be sure they don't think that, and find out from the parent what kinds of things they're okay with you saying. Share some of that script, because they might want the same language. It's really keeping it simple. With preschoolers, we might get into a little bit more detail. Like, you know, for the incarceration workshop, she talked about saying, you know, mommy broke a rule and has to go. Because she broke the rule, she has to go do some work on that before she can come back. But you're not going to do that with a toddler, but you do want to check with the parent to find out what it is okay to say, and also help the parent understand that something needs to be said to the child so we just don't pretend that nothing's happening here because the child is feeling it for all those reasons I said before. The stress in the family, the absence of the key person. They can't understand as an infant or toddler, what's going on, we're explaining it to them, so they really need us to acknowledge this. Feels weird not to have this person here. You're sad because you missed them, and we're here to take care of you until they come back.