I think my daughter genuinely dislikes me. She’s 9 and my absolute world. We do lots of things together, I take her to the park, we do crafty things, baking, little breaks away to the seaside. Her dad is a brilliant dad but it seems over the last few years she just seems to want to spend time with him, if he goes out she gets very upset by bedtime and tells me that she misses him and wishes it was me that was out and not him. She’s told me she hates me a lot of times when she’s cross, and I get alot of sarcastic replies when she’s asks me to do something and I can’t / won’t do it, for example she’ll say ‘I thought you’d say that. Daddy would do it’l because he’s kind’. I’ve tried to talk to her afterwards when she’s calm and explained that saying things like that hurts my feelings and she will tell me she’s sorry but that she doesn’t want to lie and it’s the truth.
i just can’t help but feel so sad that this is our relationship now and I worry that she will just become more and more distant from me the older she gets. She gets a lot of quality time with us both, with just me and with us all as a family so it’s not that she’s missing out on spending time with us. Until she was about 5 or 6 she was very much a mummy’s girl, obviously when she was a toddler it was me she looked to for comfort, but now it feels like she just does things with me because her dad isn’t an option to spend time with at that moment.
is this just normal for children her age? My childhood was filled with abuse that resulted in me cutting contact with my own parents so I don’t have a good bar for comparison. Both my parents told me they wished I’d never been born on an almost daily basis, never once told me they loved me and physically and mentally abused me so I’ve always tried to make sure she knows how much I love her and that her childhood is the opposite to what I had. I say that because if I was doing something to make her feel like this I really think I would be aware of it as my biggest fear is that I would become the same as my parents.