WHEN I went on an assignment in Japan for a week in May, I missed my son so much that I started going a little psycho.
I'm talking about the kind of psycho that had me staring at rosy-cheeked Japanese babies and entertaining thoughts of stealing them, just to hold them for a moment.
At night, alone in my shoebox-sized hotel room, I thought of the powdery shampoo scent that rises from my two-year-old boy's hair - a smell which clings to my nose when he snuggles up against me at home - and felt like weeping.
When he started playschool, I was a similar wreck.
I hung around like a stalker near his nursery and tried not to let his teachers catch me gawking.
The three hours he was gone seemed like an eternity; I didn't know what to do with myself.
The boy? He shed nary a tear and greeted my return with nonchalance.
Separation anxiety, it seems, afflicts parents more than it does children.
Lately, I've discovered that I am not alone in my wimpiness.
The Associated Press ran a story last Thursday on how American summer-camp directors have to prepare parents when their kids leave them to attend stay-in programmes.
Instead of homesick children crying on buses and begging their folks not to send them away, the adults are the tearful ones having trouble letting go of their frisky youngsters.
There's even a name for this condition: Kid-sickness. And these overly-dependent mums and dads have been dubbed "helicopter parents" - those who constantly hover over their offspring, even into adult life.
In Singapore, with young parents becoming more-informed, hands-on and determined to enjoy their kids, kid-sickness is becoming a common syndrome.
I see it all around me.
A friend of mine, a poised 30-something advertising executive, spent two weeks wringing her hands in an empty room next to her three-year-old son's classroom - just in case the toddler needed her. His teachers finally told her tactfully, but firmly, not to hang around anymore.
I heard about another woman who, on her first business trip abroad after having her child, burst into tears on the plane because she missed her two-year-old so much.
So do mums like me need to spend time in the shrink bin?
While therapy may help a little in easing separation anxiety for some parents, I have a cheaper and simpler cure.
Enter the Kid-sick Mothers' Support Group (KMSG).
Membership would be free, and the only thing you need to join is a confirmed four-hanky rating whenever your kid goes for a slumber party.
Members of the proposed KMSG would get together, take tea in civilised and quiet surroundings, or break out the champagne and party whenever the little ones are off at school or at slumber parties.
After all, as I found out, it's plain silly to mope around being kid-sick, when you can seize the critter-free day and do the 1,001 things you don't have time for when they're around.
I'm quite sure that before too long, it would be the kids who will be poking around outside our party haunts - jostling for position, anxiously peering in - and waving with extra-bright and eager smiles whenever they
catch our eye.
