Greetings to all! Today I would like to comment on a topic that today is very common among us, whether it happens directly to us in the family or to some friends or neighbors, in general to close people, I am referring to migration. The question is, how does migration affect our children? Join me and I will tell you my experience as a mother.

Three months ago my husband and I decided to move to Venezuela, my country, from Cuba where we had been living together for 5 years and where our little daughter was born. On January 20th I traveled alone with the 16 month old baby and he had to stay for work reasons. By that time the girl was already showing some alterations in her usual behavior, because we left the house on January 8th and stayed in Havana during all those days while we made the arrangements for the trip.

When she arrived in my country, the child began to have an irritable behavior, for anything that she was denied or that was finished, her reaction was of anger. She presented loss of appetite, she had never refused any food, on the contrary she liked to eat everything, the pediatrician always told me that I was a lucky mother for not having those problems with the feeding of the child. She began to sleep more than usual, she took long naps in the morning and in the afternoon, she spent more time asleep than awake.

All this was worrying my mom and me a lot, as we were the ones in charge of the child. Especially the lack of appetite.

The pediatrician told us that this is the migratory grief, many times we hear the word grief and we immediately think of death, but it is not like that, grief is synonymous with loss and when we go through the migration process we must adapt to the changes. In my baby's case, she missed her father very much, who had not been separated from her since she was born, since he had asked for a leave of absence from his job to take care of both of us, and until that moment she only lived with her father and mother at home, which was causing all these alterations.

When her father arrived in Venezuela and we were able to meet at home, that was 15 days ago, the girl rejected him, cried when he approached her and could not even be in the same room with him. She looked excited because her dad was at home but from far away. The good thing was that she started eating again and stopped having these episodes of anger. Little by little she has been coming closer to play with her daddy, sing and fall asleep with him like months ago.

Investigating a little further than what the pediatrician told us, I found that UNICEF has established medical checkpoints in the most important migratory routes to provide psychological care to children and adolescents who are going through a migratory process, either alone, in families or also children who must stay with a caregiver while their parents migrate. It is important that we are attentive to our little ones, if we know of any case we should go to a pediatrician to refer the child to a child psychologist who can help him/her to overcome this process.

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We cannot let our children get lost in this process of adaptation. My recommendation is that if the family is going through a migration or is planning to do so, do not forget the children, take into account their feelings and emotions and babies who cannot express what they feel require special attention. Let's think that if it is difficult for us as adults for the children it must also be difficult for all these radical changes. I hope you like my publication and the debate is open in the comments. Greetings and see you next time.