There is a lot of healing to be done. We have almost forgotten that this little boy had the horrendous experience of watching his mother drown. I have not interviewed Elián, but my 40 years of working as a child psychologist with children and parents strongly suggests that Elián has not yet had the chance to deal with the emotional cost of her death. Living with people who were nearly strangers, in a house that was constantly surrounded by chanting, singing crowds, could only compound his confusion. Elián probably did what most children his age would do: repress much of his fear and anxiety. But emotions have to be dealt with, and Elián will have to deal with his.
Six-year-olds do not understand the reality of death. Children begin by believing that anything that moves is alive. Only later do they come to understand life as a process. Indeed, when children arrive at a true understanding of death, at the age of 8 or 9, they often become frightened about their parents’ dying and their own death. Elián knows he is separated from his mother, but he probably doesn’t understand that the separation is final. Based on my clinical experience, I would say that Elián will truly mourn his mother only when he reaches adolescence and attempts to reconstruct the life he might have led if she had not died.
For now, he needs someone to remind him gently that she will not come back. He may also need help to work through the loss. One boy I treated when he was 8 survived a terrible car crash with a favorite aunt, who died from her injuries while they were pinned in the wreckage. The boy’s parents tried to protect him by not talking about her death or allowing him to go to her funeral. Two years later he was having nightmares and learning problems. I helped him deal with his feelings by getting him to talk about his aunt and the accident, and by letting him express his feelings in drawing and writing. After six months of treatment, his nightmares stopped and he began to do better in school.
Elián has been separated from his father, his grandparents, his friends and the town where he grew up. This amount of separation is extraordinarily anxiety-provoking for a young child. The media attention he has received, together with the constant turmoil in Miami, must have added to this boy’s distress.
A child can deal with this much pressure for just so long. Watching the five-month stalemate over his custody, I have been afraid that Elián’s defenses would break down and he would become fearful, anxious and depressed. Reuniting him with his father–and getting him out of the limelight–may give him the chance to do some of the healing he has not been able to do.
Some time ago, I wrote a book about “The Hurried Child”–for example, children of divorce, who are often expected to feel, think and behave as if they are older than they really are. In many divorces, children are used by one parent to express resentment of the other. The child is torn by divided loyalties, and the pain of separation is multiplied by the parents’ misuse of the child to vent their animosity. Elián’s relatives in Miami seem to have used him to vent their hatred of Castro. In so doing, I believe, they have made the healing process much more difficult.
For the sake of his emotional well-being, it is a blessing that Elián is back with his father. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of a return to the stability he needs to get on with being a kid.
