I suppose there is an adult arrogance to assume that what you believe to be best for your children will be embraced by them. With regard to our relocation from Dublin, I must have told Leo 1,000 times how fantastic it is for him to be living in Manor-hamilton. I have reeled off the advantages over and over.

"Just think, you'll get to spend more time with your Dad" and "isn't it great that you can have friends over to the house all the time?" I was rather pathetically singing the old Bagatelle number "Take me away from the city, I want to be where I can be on my own" when Leo seditiously began singing the reverse. "Take me away from the country," he crooned with a traitorous look.

He tried to welch out of it by saying it was Dustin's fault, but there was a seed of truth in it. I realised suddenly that, while of course he is happy with all the advantages I had articulated, he missed his own friends. Just because the quality of contact he'd had with his buddies in Dublin was different, it didn't make the links and relationships any less important. Sure, he really only got to see them occasionally out of school time, but they were his mates, part of his own personal life.

"I miss Kevin," he wailed later on. So an agreement was made that at the first opportunity, I'd give him a day off school and drive him to Dublin. Secret arrangements were made with Kevin's parents, and I only told Leo the morning of the journey. Kevin was waiting at the end of his road, with a big stick and a while plastic bag attached like a flag - just in case we missed him.

Climbing into the back of the car and seeing Leo's Gameboy in hand, Kevin announced: "You see, I just knew you'd have your Gameboy with you Leo." And that was the end of any conversation between me and the boys for the rest of the day. Heads together in the back seat they resumed their friendship right where it had left off, and I felt ashamed that at no point in this process we have been involved in, had I paid attention to Leo's personal feelings in the matter or to the relationships and friendships he had forged as an individual, even if he is only seven.

I thought that all the things I wanted for him were the same as those he wanted for himself, and while it's true they cross over, he retains needs and feelings unique to him. We did the obligatory leisure centre visit where the boys went down the slide, and chased each other around until they emerged like two shiny pin-balls, exhilarated and sweating from the exercise. Pizza and more conversation followed, along with army bases made from knifes and forks in the restaurant. And then it was time to take Kevin home.

"Now, no fuss when Kevin has to leave," I'd warned Leo earlier, and true to his word, he was as good as gold. On the journey home, he mulled over his day. "You see Mum, Kev and I never, ever fight," he said, and I laughingly reminded him that was because he didn't see Kev that much. I was rewarded with a look of scorn which was richly deserved. I know that Mums miss the point spectacularly sometimes.

The trip had a calming effect on Leo, which was its own reward. A few days later, when he was playing with his Leitrim buddies Ross and Colm, I said "did you tell the boys where you went last week".

"Oh, yeah, I went to see my friend in Dublin," he announced "my friend Kevin", and I could see he no longer put things in a hierarchy. The journey to Dublin and back seemed to have reassured him that our lives had not moved on and left him behind, but that he could bring his Dublin life and memories with him, just like we do.

"Would you come to Leitrim for a holiday," he'd asked Kevin. "Have you ever been away from your Mum and Dad for a night?" Kevin's answer was in the negative on the latter but positive on the former.

"See, I've been to Florida, Mum," Leo explained later, "and lived in Cork, and Dublin and Leitrim, so I guess I'm a little more experienced."

We'll make another visit in the months ahead, I've promised him, not for my work or Tony's or on our visits to see Tony's daughter Hannah, whom Leo adores, but just to let him "hang" with his friends. I reckon it's my best chance of not only making him a bona fide Leitrim man, but a happy one in the long term.