Stop obsessing over son's 'injuries', divorcee dad told

A divorced father used to take off his son's clothes to check if he has any physical injury that may have been caused by the boy's mother every time he met with him at the Sharjah Department of Social Services.
The father had got a court order to see his nine-year-old son as per the divorce agreement.
Raising suspicions that the boy might have been assaulted by his former wife, the father even used to subject his son to screening at hospitals during the schedule of family meetings.
Ahmed Al Tartoor, Director of the Child Rights Protection Centre affiliated to the department, said that the boy is under the mother's custody, and the father sees the child at the department on a weekly basis.
However, the supervisors at the centre noticed that the father undressed his son and inspected his body to make sure that there are no marks of physical assault, before taking the boy outside the centre.
Al Tartoor said that the father even used to drive his son to hospitals for X-ray screening to ascertain that his son had no bone fracture or any internal injury. The father then returns the boy to the centre, which, in turn, gives the child back to his mother.
"Despite the mutual love and happiness between the boy and the father, who brings him gifts and toys, the excessive fear that something wrong may happen to his son is what had pushed him to do that," Al Tartoor pointed out.
"The staff at the Child Rights Protection Centre managed to convince the father that his act negatively affects the boy psychologically and makes him accustomed to humiliation, making him a person who accepts and surrenders to humiliation in the future," Al Tartoor said. He advised the father to understand the nature of children, who like playing a lot, which may result in being exposed to injury due to falling, and it is not necessary that the mother who may have caused him the injury.
reporters@khaleejtimes.com

• Sharjah