Background: the nodes are cms pages. Each of them have the "slug" as being the nodename property. When you try to change the slug of that page, it performs a "move" of that node from the old location to the new along with any children that that page may have. here is screenshot with what symfony returns back. does it help?
I was thinking to make a workaround to clone the page and move "by hand" all its possible children to the clone after which I've removed the old version - but's an expensive operation. thanks