5yo daughter confused and doesn’t want to live with me

[AML1103]

Hi All,

so I have a 5 year old daughter and I am no longer with her dad. We split up when she was 3 just turning 4 and she is now almost 6. She is a very switched on 5 year old for her age and remembers almost everything about me being with her dad.

up until me and her dad broke up, she was a mummy’s girl through and through, I used to struggle to get her to even give her dad a cuddle at times. When her dad moved out, she struggled a lot. She would cry at night time saying she missed him and she wants him back home which broke my heart every night. Me and her dad are civil enough and never let her hear any negative conversations or even feel there is an atmosphere.

she’s now almost 6 and she has seen him regularly ever since he moved out. To be specific, she stays at his every Tuesday and Friday night and then every other weekend he will have her until the Monday where he drops her off at school. We have worked out that I have her about 55% of the time and he has her 45% of the time.

the problem I’m having is, when she is with me, she constantly cries about missing her dad and wants to go to his house. She tells me she loves me repeatedly and that I’m the best mum ever but also apologies about the fact that she wants to go there.

I have never shouted at her for feeling this way, I have only tried to be understanding and calm and explained that I love her and her dad loves her no matter what.

I know I’m a good mum, she is my absolute world and my number 1 priority. I am the parent that takes her to the doctors when she’s poorly, I take her on little getaways and days out doing anything she wants. I am the parent that lets all her friends from the street come in and play in her room for hours on end or lets her have sleepovers almost every weekend. I do everything to make her happy but it feels as though it’s not enough.

I do have a new partner and she has met him and gets on with him so well, but I do have a feeling her dad and his family are putting things into her head because she once said to me “daddy is sad when I leave him and you have (partner)” so I have a funny feeling she has said she wanted to come home once and her dad has said “nooo, daddy wants you here because I’m sad when you go and mummy is alright cause she has (partner)” and that’s stuck in her head. I did ask her what her dad says to her and she did tell me that he has told her he’s lonely and sad when she goes so I do think that’s playing a massive part along with the fact that she still sleeps in the same bed as her dad and doesn’t have a bed time at all, whereas at my house she sleeps in her own room and has a bedtime routine.

am I overthinking this or is it a problem? How do I handle it because I feel constant shame and guilt and I don’t quite know what to do.

i have spoken to her dad about it and he tells me I’m being stupid and letting a 5 year old manipulate me but he isn’t the one dealing with the constant crying. If I let her, she would move in with her dad tomorrow and she once said that to me and I burst into tears and she started panicking and hugging me really tight and retracting on everything she said.

I think she carries too much weight for a 5 year old. It’s not her job to worry about her parents or feel torn, she is too young and I have tried explaining this to her but she doesn’t get it. I want her to just enjoy life at both houses and be happy but right now, that’s not happening.

any advice would be so helpful! Thank you

@Luckydog7 I have spoken to her about why she wants to go there and she says it’s because her dad does anything she wants and she loves him so much. She also mentions that he is sad and lonely when shes not there and she wants to make him happy. It breaks my heart that she feels it’s her responsibility to make him happy and when she talks to me, I can just see the responsibility on her shoulders weighing her down. When I talk to her dad though, he denies everything and tells me it’s just because she has so much fun there and she’s centre of attention all the time.

So much adult expectation of this very little person. Op I think you have done all you can in terms of appropriate parenting. I don't think you are the problem I think dad is!
I think I would be steering the conversation from now on. Like this - 'oh I miss dad!!!' 'That's ok you will see him Friday - gosh don't forget it's swimming tomorrow so exciting isn't it!/shall we go and see gran tomorrow that would be nice/shall we invite your friend over blah blah you get the idea.

Listening to children's worries and feeding them are different things. I think she could settle if you break the habit of bedtime sadness.

She's still so young, and it seems like she really needs to sleep back in the bed with you for a while for comfort. It's really not a big deal for a 5 year old to go through stages of regression or insecurity and want the comfort of sleeping with their parent. Surely making your DD feel secure is more important than paving the way for your new partner to move into your bed? (Presumably he's not here when your DD is anyway, and he could still come and stay whilst she's at her dad's).

This is as wrong as wrong can be.

Please get this child to a therapist who can get to the bottom of what your ex is doing.

Play therapy would be best for a child her age.

Do not let the grass grow under your feet here.

Do not question her yourself.

I'm not suggesting sexual abuse here ( though not ruling it out) but he has turned her into his partner including his partner in bed.

It is emotional and psychological abuse of the child with absolutely no sense of appropriate boundaries.

For the sake of your child, you need to do whatever it takes to investigate and put a screeching halt to this. Get it done ASAP.

Sorry Op I’m confused - you split with her dad when she was three, but also moved her out of your bed when she was three in preparation for your new partner staying over?

Does he live with you?

Going against the grain but your 5 year old child is clearly struggling emotionally, put her back in bed with you until she’s feeling more secure! Not only is she dealing with a lot of change, she’s tormented between trying to look after her dad (which she shouldn’t have to do) and not upsetting you.

No, no, no to getting her back into your bed to sleep.

This child's boundaries are being disrespected by her father. He is not treating her as a child.

It almost sounds as though she has formed a habit, as part of her bedtime routine at your place, of crying for her dad.

As a very simple starting point, I'd try shaking up your evening routine just in case that lessens the upset towards bedtime. Replace the iPad time with really good quality time with you. DD and I do a jigsaw together, build a Lego thing or play a short game, before bed. She looks forward to this time.

You could try something similar just to change the routine leading up to the point she goes to bed. If she wouldn't miss the bath, skip the bath some nights so that you can do a longer activity together after dinner.

You're never going to control what her dad is saying to her. I would be really unhappy about him undermining her sleeping in her own bed though. Why's he doing it. Is it because he's really lonely? It seems to be coming from a selfish place.

MY DD is nearly 7 and will occasionally sleep in with me but 95% of the time she goes off to sleep in her own bed and stays there all night.

Calm down @mathanxiety!

Bloody hell, it’s a massive leap to even imply sexual abuse.

Neither parent is coming across well here - yes the dad needs to put her in her own room, but if the OP moved another partner in straight away then she’s not innocent either. I may be incorrect and apologise if so OP, you haven’t responded yet so I’m speculating.

She is a CHILD. It’s perfectly normal for a 5 year old child to want comfort from a parent in times of upset and distress and yes that may mean co-sleeping for a while. If she were 15 I would agree with you but the hysteria is unnecessary.

I personally don't think sexual abuse is a huge leap.. he is at the very least using his child as comfort.. and now op says he sometimes shares a bed with his own mother!

You’ve received some great advice.
If your daughter said that she missed you when she was at school today, would you have been angry that the school didn’t call you so that you could take her home ? It’s totally normal that she will think of the parent that she’s not currently with and it’s a life lesson like dealing with her feelings of missing you when she’s at school.

As pp said, she isn’t saying that she wishes that she lives with Dad. She misses him and that’s ok. As much as you’d like to fix the situation, this is something that you can’t fix and like millions of kids around the world who has been in her situation, she will hopefully settle down and learn to live with those complicated and difficult feelings. If she missed her best friend or grandparent would you drop her off there ?

You clearly adore your dd and are doing a great job as a single parent. Please understand that you are loved by your dd and her feelings about dad doesn’t mean that she considers him better than you. She misses him in the moment and that’s no reflection on your performance as a parent. Next time she misses daddy don’t drop her off or you will end up in a situation where you won’t every time dd is mad at you.

💐 to you OP.

Patronizing much?

OP, the comment that she's sad her dad is sleeping all alone is very concerning.

The dad is clearly not putting any appropriate boundaries in place - in fact he is actively breaking down boundaries - and his comment that the child is the centre of attention when she's with him is getting the situation backwards. He is the centre of attention when she's with him.

I seriously urge you to get her into play therapy. Art therapy would also be appropriate. The idea would be to get a clear understanding of what pressures and conflicts she is experiencing, if any, to eliminate the possibility of SA, and to help the child understand that her father's happiness is not her project.

You did the right thing in moving her to her own bed at the age you moved her, imo, and you and she have a bedtime routine that is solid and age appropriate, a good mix of accompaniment and independence.

The way your ex is treating your dd is sinister. This is parentification, which is where a child is made responsible for the adult either emotionally or physically, and coercive control, where he’s trying to get your dd to live with him full time to please him whilst giving her the impression he’s doing everything for her when it’s all about him. He’s making her into his quasi partner. Yuk. Idk about any kind of sexual abuse, but yes, everything would be on my radar.

As others have said, get your dd into therapy to unpick this and create some healthy boundaries. Your ex is never, ever going to admit to wrong doing.

This sounds very much like how my DS1 was about his dad. He was always worried about him being lonely and not having any money.

I would try to get some help from a 3rd party. I was able to use the Children's Centre that was a hub for Health Visitors and nursery nurses. I don't think those places exist any longer. I would speak to DD's school or GP to try to get to the bottom of it.

In my DS's case, he wanted to look after his dad, it was nothing to do with preferring him to me.

What she's trying to say that is that she misses her life as it was .
That she misses her family being together
I bet you 100% she cries for you when she's at her dad's house ,but he's just not telling you .
You need to be strong op ,to show her some positives from the new situation

Completely agree with all this. Children respond very well when you fill their cup.
My dd2 struggled with separated parent stuff and being v upbeat and talking about all the great things to look forward to in the evening around bed time helps a lot I think.

Sage advice here I think.

I think the co sleeping is creating a weird co dependency that's not healthy.

@AML1103 He still shares a bed sometimes with his mum and he is 36. Enough said 🤣 are you having a laugh??? I thought it was bad enough that she slept with her dad all the time but for a grown adult man to share a bed with his mum??? what kind of family does he come from???? I would seriously worry about that!

Thank you everyone. We had a situation last night. My daughter got rushed to hospital with an asthma attack so her dad come to the hospital. When she calmed down, she asked if she could go with her dad back to his house. I said no in a nice way but her dad was like “I have no problem with that but let’s talk about it later” … I looked at him given I have had so many conversations with him and whispered “you need to say no, I can’t always be the bad person” and then he started to explain to our daughter that she needed to stay with me. This has always been the problem, I am always the one that has to say no whilst he looks like an angel. funnily enough, when he explained why she can’t, she didn’t ask again and didn’t get upset when he left the hospital. Clearly, she listens to him, good and bad. So it kind of confirmed to me that things are being said to her

She's only five. All she needs to see and hear is you being very calm and in control, constantly repeating the same reassuring message. She must not feel, in anyway, that she has any responsibilities for either of her parent's happiness. She must not feel, in anyway, that she has a choice in this matter. She simply does not have a choice, she lives with Mummy most of the time and also visits Daddy on specific days. End of.

You occasionally letting her stay with her Daddy, out of sync, just because she really wants to, is just going to really confuse he. Even worse, it will make her think that, if she's upset enough and for long enough, then you might agree to the three of you all living together again. How can you not realise this?

You're allowing her to think she can influence the situation - and deep down she will find this very frightening because she's only 5. Isn't this obvious? She simply cannot cope with all this living in her little head. You need to stop giving so much credence to her tears and worries because, by taking it so seriously, you're just reinforcing to her how horrible and upsetting this situation is. Instead, you constantly remind her that she lives with Mummy, everything is fine, she only ever sees Daddy on certain days, everything is fine, it's not up to her to make Daddy happy, everything is fine - now, shall we read a book, play in the garden, do some baking etc.

You really need to stop giving in to her tears. It might make things better for the next 15 minutes, but you're actually making her life (and yours) so much harder for the next 5 years.

Oh and tell your pathetic ex to get a grip and stop crying and pantomiming in front of his DD.

I do not buy Daddy being a nice guy here. In fact he's really inappropriate by laying his emotional needs on a 5 year old girl. That's on him and that's why she is saying to you, because your ex does not like the fact you have a partner.

This is actually a big red flag that your child is being manipulated and he is engineering it. She is only five. Protect her from this shit.