6 year old daughter telling me she doesn’t think she loves me anymore

[Hunter105]

Hello, so my 6 year old loving, caring, smart daughter who has always been stuck to me like glue, hugging me constantly and telling me she loves me has told me she “thinks” she doesn’t love me anymore. She is saying her mind is telling her this. She said she thinks all other mothers are better than me and she thinks she is going to forget about me when she is older. I am stunned and horrified.. I am trying to hide the tears when she tells me this. I keep telling her I will always love her and these are just thoughts. She has always wanted to hug me and sit in my lap and now has not asked to hug me in days! She Is also answering lots of questions with “I don’t know and I think so” which is also strange for her. This has been happening for 1 week. I have had something very stressful happen to me at work so I am thinking she must have felt some of that but not sure. She was always on the side of worrying too much so Today I made her a worry box and it seemed to help a little bit. Has anyone out there experienced this? I am talking to her pedi tomorrow to see if she has heard of anything like this before.. I had seen a post about this from 2016 and it suggested since it’s been so long to start a new thread. The info was helpful in that post but thought I would reach out to see if anyone else has experienced this. Thank you.

I'd be worried something had happened to her to display such a sudden change. Has anything happened? Has she been anywhere new?

Has another child be telling her these things at school? I would imagine that she’s picking these ideas up from somewhere.

Also, while I get that this is upsetting, you need to take it less personally. She’s 6 yo and processing various complicated emotions. She doesn’t necessarily mean everything she says. I think the pediatrician visit is a bit OTT.

First of all I'd remain calm and thank her for being so honest about such big feelings. It is I'm sure heartbreaking but it's a GOOD thing that she's felt safe and connected enough to you to say such things. I think it's ok to tell her that it makes you very sad to hear it but make it very clear that it doesn't make you love her any less and try not to make the conversations about this about you. Then maybe try and unpick why she's saying this. Has she got a good enough grasp on what she's actually saying? Is it something simple like that another child is allowed a certain toy or a later bedtime etc? (It's not a reason to GIVE her that if so but you'll know and you can perhaps rationalise why it is you don't do things quite the same way) It's entirely possible as well that she's just heard a friend saying similar and simply wants to 'test' how you'll react to her saying it. Just try and give her space to verbalise what exactly she means and don't punish or dismiss it otherwise she'll just learn that her feelings don't matter and that she can't really be honest with you about her feelings. She'll thrive during her teenage years if she continues to feel that she can be this honest. Just remember that xx

Thank you for all your feedback. She had recently been told by a friend that she loved her father more than her mother. At the time I didn’t discuss this with her at length (which I look back and should have) and I am not imagining how that can impact someone like my daughter who I don’t think can comprehend loving another parent over another (although I could say she seeks my attention/ affection) more often than my husband (her father).

Meant to say NOW imagining.

Just wanted to follow up to say that I ended up calling my dtrs Pedi said explaining to her what is going on. she thinks all this is from a large amount of stress that I have been going through and she is feeling it and in turn expressing her frustration with it out on me. The past couple of days she seems to have not been saying too too much about not loving me and has been getting closer to me and starting to hug but still telling me she doesn’t want to be doing it. I hope this keeps going and will return back to they way it was. I hope if anyone reads this that they find it helpful since I was in shambles about it initially and the post about this in2016 was very helpful to me. I will try to check in hopefully soon to share another update.

I know it must be heartbreaking, but i think its very important that if your daughter is telling you she doesn't want to hug you, even if she's saying it while she's hugging you, that you stop, let go of her, thank her for telling you and remind her that she never ever has to hug someone if she doesn't want to.

Also, would it be possible to get her dad to do the majority of the childcare for a few days, give you both some space from each other for a bit of a reset?

@Hunter105 how are you doing?

I’m ok- it’s still going on but less frequent and less intense. She is still asking “what if I don’t love you” and I am trying not to engage her in that discussion (per her pedi) and we have started a “worry box” for things like this. She also mentioned her close school friend that told her she loves her dad more than her mom a few times so I am thinking that it really made her confused that this could actually happen and is somehow creating distance with me or somehow trying to mimicking her friend. Thanks for asking and as I said I hope this posts help others in case they are going through something similar.

My son tells me he doesn’t love me all the time. It’s very clear to me that he’s testing me to check if i still love him whatever! It would never occur to me to react or be sad, i know he loves me, of course he does.

I just say ‘that’s fine, it’s not little boys’ jobs to love their mummies, it’s mummies’ jobs to love their boys. And i love you no matter what’.

That seems to make him feel secure enough to run off and carry on playing

Hi I know this is message is about a year old, however I am going thru something very similar with my child. I am curious to know if you got any answers on this behavior?

I’m just finding this post a few years later from when it was posted, however it sounds very similar to what’s happening now with me and my daughter. She is 9, but has always been quite young for her age. She has been having intrusive thoughts for a while which she says since she told me about, have started to become less frequent and are going away. She also told me she is unsure about a lot of things and often says ‘I think, ‘I don’t know’ I’m unsure’. She became very upset tonight and started to try and tell me she doesn’t know if she loves me. That the way I look bothers her. I have two moles on my face which makes her think that maybe she doesn’t love me because of this. I’m so upset, I tried my best to listen and be comforting to her but at one point I couldn’t stop my own tears and she then became very distressed that she had made me cry. I’m upset now that I couldn’t hold them back because now she’s begging me to forget everything she said and it’s not true. I’m not sure what’s happening here. I thought we were very close and she has always been considered by everyone as a mummy’s girl. Very loving towards me, I thought we had a good relationship. I’m at a loss as to what’s going on and not sure what to do. Any advice would be much appreciated. It was comforting to find this post. What was described sounds so similar. I wonder how things panned out in the end for this mother and daughter? Was everything ok in the end?

Hello! I got an email about this post and wanted to respond! What happened then was completely devastating. I ended up talking to a therapist about it and basically the therapist thought it was a response to another stressor that I was personally dealing with from work no less that was affecting me a great deal. He said her behavior might’ve been from me not being available for a short time and she was confused about it and not happy about it and it was presenting like this. At the time it was unbearable her tell me she didn’t love me and/ or didn’t know she loved me.
I’m not sure if this is actually the case but I do know kids that age have so many different thoughts running through their head and then anxiety comes along.. which she probably got from me. I think when kids have a lot of anxiety, the question a lot of things and a lot of their own thoughts. I tried all different ways to deal with it. I think mostly tried my best to cover it up and not let it bother me. When she said that I remember responding with- well that’s OK- I still love you. You can feel however you want to feel but I love you.
With all that said.. it passed, over time. I couldn’t really even tell you how long it lasted. She just turned 11. She stopped saying it over time and came back to hugging and loving me just like she was doing prior to this long episode (which I like to refer to it as lol). She’s back to telling me she loves me all the time! Every so often maybe twice in the last few years, she has randomly said remember when I told you I wasn’t sure if I loved you? That’s what I said right?Why did I think that? After my heart sinks a little, she said- what was I thinking? And then just moves on. And I move on too! I feel that now she is a very well adjusted Child! she’s smart and loving and gets anxious at times with what I consider to be slightly intrusive thoughts on if she did the right thing, or said something that was rude by accident but I think it’s the anxiety talking.
I am truly sorry you are going thru this but i truly believe you daughter go thru this phase/ episode, whatever you wanna call it- and this will be a distant memory in the future. ❤️

Hi, thank you so much for your reply ! It means a lot to me. I have been feeling so upset and worried about this. I’m not aware of anyone who has had this happen to so i really appreciate your post and reply. My daughter has been very quiet ever since she spoke to me. She is at her dad’s now so I won’t see her this weekend. Which just leaves me going over everything in my head. I wish I had reacted the way you did. I should have just told her I loved her rather than getting upset. I was taken by surprise, when I asked her what was wrong she didn’t want to tell me and I told her she could tell me anything, now she regrets opening up to me. You are a great mum for being able to answer in such a way when your heart feels like it’s breaking. I am so glad you and your daughter have a good relationship now and it all worked out. It’s so lovely to hear that. I think there is a lot of truth in what you have said. My daughter has been telling me for some time she doesn’t see me enough and that grandma feels like her mum. I am a working single mum and so my mum does have to help me a lot. She is then at her dads every other weekend. It’s sadly not something I can change however I have also been very stressed with my job and I know I have been bringing that stress home with me. I have not been myself for a while because of work. This has certainly been a wake up call. I just hope I can retrieve this. Thank you so much for your kind words they have really helped ❤️

Hi again- I just read your last message and try not to be so hard on yourself. Believe me, I reacted differently in the beginning when it first started asking her why she was saying it, questioning her and getting upset even crying in front of her, asking her how could she feel like this? So don’t think you did anything wrong that’s a natural reaction. I do have to say that this situation for me was so disturbing. I almost felt like I may have been overreacting, but it was the most stressful thing I’ve ever dealt with. in addition to that stress and my work stress I ended up becoming ill and I blame it on all the stress. So if you’re anything like me, try to do whatever you can to decrease your stress for you and your children. Because you don’t want an illness to follow which will make things way more stressful. I wish you good luck and please have hope that this will pass. I feel like kids turn into different human beings every year lol so since you’re a great mom (it sounds like you are) this will pass as she gets a little bit older. It’s just so hard to understand when you’re “in it”. Ps- I actually journaled about this when it started and did some follow ups (journaling is not my usual thing, but I thought it was important in case something progressed in the future) not sure if this will be helpful to you but wanted to suggest it. Good luck and take care . You are a great mom.