My 5 year old daughter hates me.

[Mydaughterhatesme]

It’s been getting progressively worse over the year but my daughter seems to hate me. She tells me numerous times a day I hate you, you are a bully, you are ugly, I want a different mum, I don’t want to live here. Every little thing I ask her to do ends up like this. Reading for school or homework is an absolute nightmare.

It’s getting me so down. I left an abusive relationship a few years ago and she hasn’t seen her dad for a couple of years. She loved him but he was just using her to abuse me. I can’t help but think she blames me for this or is finding it hard and unable to understand. I talk about it with her as best I can. She is loved a great deal by me and my family and doesn’t go without. She often says she loves me at times and gets anxious when I’m not around.
Honestly she just has no respect for me, if I’m upset she just laughs. Perhaps I’ve been too weak because I felt guilty. If I say will I love you she will just go well I don’t and I don’t care.

Perhaps she just really does hate me. I thought leaving would save us but it’s just breaking us further apart and I don’t know what to do.

And just to rub salt in the wound she says when she gets to see daddy she will live with him and not me.

It's a difficult one.
She must have so many pent up emotions about the situation.
I'm sure at 5 she isnt quite labelling "hate" correctly to the emotion she is experiencing. Maybe she is feeling angry or anxious or some of the negative more subtle emotions.

My son says lots of things he doesn't mean to me. Some days they get to me, some days I can take them with a pinch of salt.

Yesterday, in a cafe, he said "I'm going to cut your neck off" I didn't react because it was pointless. He barely knew what he was saying. It was only when the cafe man came over and told him off that I decided I should probably reprimand him. But to be honest it would only reward him with attention. I was better off ignoring him. I don't think for one minute he had the intention to do it, more that he was exploring words.

I think it might be the same for your daughter. She is probably trying to communicate that she is feeling unhappy and seems to get the quickest or biggest reaction when she says she hates you.

I don't know what you can do that you are not already doing to help her.

Maybe get some social stories explaining that both parents still love her etc. But they didn't love each other any more. Potentially look at getting a child counsellor of some variety? Some sort of safe space for an outlet for her feels xxx

On holiday she told me to swim into the middle of the lake and drown. I’m sure she doesn’t mean it but it gets to me when it’s repeated.

It’s alway after being told to do something, pick up toys, stop playing its dinner, bed, time to read etc etc or if I won’t buy her a toy. She gets quite mean at school if someone won’t play with her. I repeat over and over it’s not kind and gentle to speak like that.