DD seems to hate dh some of the time...

[CountessDracula]

she is 2.8 - started a few weeks ago, if she wakes in the night and he goes to her she screams NO DADDY GO AWAY, she only seems to want Mummy at the moment. He used to read her stories every night but is not allowed to most of the time as she insists I do it

He is getting rather upset by this, in fact he asked me to post this message. It seems to have coincided with her going to nursery - could it just be that she is feeling extra clingy to me because of that. If I am not around she is fine with him, adores him. If he tells her I am out she is fine too. If I am there she only seems to want me to do stuff for her.

Anyone else experienced this? I felt so sad for him the other day, he said "I thought little girls were supposed to adore their Daddies"

My DD has weeks when I am her 'favourite' and others when DH is her fave. Its usually him tho.

It sounds to me as tho it is linked to nursery and spending less time with you as a result, and I am sure it will pass very quickly.

Can you get him to spend a bit more time with her alone? Even tho my DD usually prefers DH, 'their' time is a saturday morning when he takes her to her swimming lesson, which is parents participation.

x

oh btw we both work (him f/t, me 4 days) so she sees almost as much of him as she does of me

CD - my DD and DH are exactly the same and have been for some time now, as long as I can remember really

I know it causes immense pain to my DH although he tries hard not to let it show. He is a fabulous father to her too.

This changes the whole family dynamics too in that because she is so demanding of me my DS inevitably goes to daddy more than he comes to me.

For the last year or so I have deliberately shared my time very equally between the two children but it is never enough for DD - she always moans about me giving attention to anyone (including DH) rather than her. However, I will not give into it - she either gets DH or no-one when it is DH's night for story and cuddles with her.

I hate the title of the book, nevertheless, the 'Manipulative child' has some excellent advice for this kind of situation. I wish I could say that it works in practice but I really am not sure of that at all!

My dd is 2 1/2, and sometimes we've had the same - we have an au pair too, so sometimes its been dh or the au pair on the receiving end of this. It has been directed at me too, but this so far has been very rare. We went through a phase recently where for weeks the au pair (who dd adores) was greeted every morning with "go away!". We just made a joke out of it, and if its ever directed at dh or me, we're quite relaxed about it and say OK fine. She seems to go in phases, so I'm sure your dd will move on from this one (beware, it could be your turn next...!)

Oh god I hope it is just a phase

She has been like this for very short times with one or the other of us before but not for this length of time.

Last night she woke in the night and he went down, she screamed and yelled, he came back up and I told him to go and tell her I was out. Then she was fine. I don't want to have to lie to her to get her to spend time with him though!

We had this a lot with DS1 from about the same age, including "I hate you daddy" "Go away and never come back" etc etc. Not surprisingly DP was quite upset by it, but the thing that worked best was the approach crumpet advocated of just being very relaxed about it. If it gets very little reaction, it will probably stop or diminish. I think in our case it was definitely to do with mummy-clinginess.

We went through this too with ds2. He is 4 at the weekend and still occasionally will have a "not daddy" phase. Dh was also very upset by it when it first started happening. Please let your dh know it is almost definitely nothing personal and it will pass.

we had it too, with ds mainly. Although dd usually prefers daddy, ds usually prefers me, they swap and change all the time too. its just normal, dont worry