6 year old daughter wants to live with Dad ??

[SJLTM]

Hi, don't really want to ramble on with history, but long story cut short.
My youngest DD who is 6 wants to live with her Dad. I have had 2 yrs of completed trauma after visits to Dad, she just can not cope without him.

Have tried every possibility, more contact, more calls but nothing helps.

We have briefly discussed this and it seems it would just be a roll reversal, he would get all the boring stuff and I would get the fun weekends.

Have any of you got experience of this arrangement, and can it work ?

She is 'our' only child together, but have a 20yr old DD and 12yr old DS from my first marriage still at home. Ex was the instigator of the split as he had an affair.

Have you got a link to that research please?

Custodyminefield has research into importance of both parents playing active roles. And actually states that children without fathers involved fair the worse overall....

WishIWasRimaHorton... As you say the research you have is for younger children the the OP....and shared parenting isn't 'trendy' it is very rare unfortunately. Although many people are trying to get this to become the norm upon seperation. The sad thing is although people are shuddering at the awful possibility of a mother not seeing their child enough the same people it appears will gladly prevent those same children from spending quality time with their father.

children need a meaningful relationship with both parents, however that may work.

www.separateddads.co.uk/SharedCustodyOfYourChildren.html

another link

How sure can you be that this is what daughter thinks she wants, rather than dad "keeping on at her" about how much he misses her and would love her to live with him all the time?

My niece at the age of 11 had this pressure put on her by her dad, he promised her the world if she lived with him. He manipulated her to say she wanted to live with him. Now at the age of 17 she has to make cups of tea for him, answer the phone - even when hes sat next to it and fetch the remote control for him and has done since she moved in with him. As for the world - well she's still waiting for that promise to happen!!

Terible for your niece to be put under pressure by her parent.... And I'm sure that goes on by one side or the other far too frequently. However, their are plenty of children who are desperate to live with their fathers or even just see a bit more of them but their mothers will not allow it.

sorry but I've just had a step child sobbing all this weekend because they are so unhappy and miss their father so much. He can not bear to leave but mom will not even consider increasing contact at all. Too concerned that it may effect csa payments and child may be happier.

There is always different sides but I find it worrying that so may people assume that mum should make all decisions, and that children are better off with mum etc

It is very difficult isn't it :(

I think I would worry about the bond being broken further (between you and her) - if she really is a Daddy's girl, then that bond wont be broken by not living together.

I think it's important to improve your bond with her and tell her that you love her far too much to not live with her, that she is your daughter and you simply cannot allow her to live anywhere but with you... maybe this is what she needs to be told instead of her worrying about what she would like to happen, what might happen, (maybe) how to please Daddy...

It's a bit of a gamble either way but I wouldn't want to risk her feeling like sumum's daugher does (did?).

Maybe she is just pushing you to see how much you care? To see if you too will abandon her?

I would absolutely facilitate her spending a lot of time with her Dad as well though.

By telling your daughter you love her too much to let her live with her father it will make her think her father doesn't love her enough to live with her.
By the logic you give above children who are closer to their mums should live with their fathers even if they would prefer to live with their mothers so that they can build a stronger bond.
On posts about children not wanting to see their dad that hasn't been mentioned...

There isn't an easy answer, maybe more time with dad would pacify her through.

One question to OP... Who moved further away? Is there any chance of living closer to make school thing work whoever she lives with. I don't think changing schools is a worry at the moment but I think it would be ideal if your daughter could spend significant time (daily routine and leisure) with each parent.
As he has said he won't ask for maintenance or prevent her moving back at any time I think we can assume he has daughters best interest in mind nd not financial gain or to make a rift between mum and daughter

Telling your daughter you love her too much to let her live with her Dad is emotional blackmail surely?

The decision made must be made in the best interests of the daughter not the parents.

If a child says she doesn't want to see her Dad the replies are usually the child should be listened to and she shouldn't be forced to go.

So should a child be listened to or not?

WishIWasRimaHorton - I too would be interested in seeing this 'substantial amount of research' which suggests that early years attachment and bonding is crucial with mum. Seeing as for the first 3-4 months of my DS1 life mother had postnatal depression and couldn't even look at her DS.

so any child who loses their mother early eg death and is brought up by dad is destined to suffer? i dont buy that.

the issue is all about the residence "battles" for want of better word.

"you love her far too much to not live with her, that she is your daughter and you simply cannot allow her to live anywhere but with you" - wow that is too much for a 6 year old to handle -even an older child - putting burden on the child? it i about the mother's love and her needs? i dont think so.

as WandN points out - ther eare cases where a parent just isnt up to the job for whatever reason.

if dad is equally good as a parent -then there can be no valid rason for main residence not to be with dad.

the mother's "need" to have daughter live with her is not a valid argument and i dont buy the maternal bond thingy.

ic ant see any good reason for op not to trial the daughter lviing full time with dad and having extensive contacts on weekends with mum.

where is the problem in that?
she still gets bonding time with mum - and if on a weekend then fantastic for mum! she gets all the good times!

no one is saying mum wont see daughter, there will be regualr weekely contact and overnights.

i dont get why this should be a problem just because it is the "mother".

i this case, dd seems to have need of being with dad - maybe that is something to explore altogther in family therapy if both parents are willing.

but as a temp measure - let dd live with dad and visit with mum.

see how it goes.

Did any of you read this post:

sumum Wed 23-Mar-11 20:08:10
hi yes I have been in your situation.
Twelve years ago my daughter 11 at the time wanted to live with her dad, we had been split for 3 years and she was always a daddy's girl.
my relationship with her was very difficult and she wanted to go.
I had not long met my now dh and I think she realised me and her dad would never get back together.

It was VERY hard, so very hard just seeing her at weekends and I felt like a complete failure and the worst mother in the world.
My dd had to go to a new school and make new friends. she stayed there and never lived with me again.

Now she and I have a great relationship, she has a baby and is always asking me for advice.

However I did recently ask her if she had made the right choice, if she thought she was old enough to make that choice and if I should have let her make that descision. She said 'no' she was always waiting for me to stand up to her and bring her home . Also as a teenager she self harmed and OD twice(hospital job) so she was not ok.

My advice would be that your dd is way too young to be making that choice. Times have changed in society and dads do take a greater role but to not live with your mother(if it is possible) could lead to rejection problems in the future.

As I said my dd is doing great now but I still live with the guilt.

cestlavie - You don't think a child suffers when it's mother dies. You don't think this is a life altering event? Of course the child will be 'ok' - but I defy you to say it's ideal and if it's not ideal then how is it helping this conversation?

Daddy chose to have an affair.
Daddy chose to leave.
Mummy did not.

It is my belief that this little girl needs to know that her Mummy will always be there to look after her and put her first. That she wants her, that she loves her and that (even with her DD's 'permission') she isn't going to abandon her.

OP does Daddy let her do as she pleases. have what she wants, is it all playtime and none of the getting up for school and eating your veggies time that you have?

Daddy did not choose to leave his daughter!
Affairs are adults buisness not the childs... She can know mummy loves her without living with mummy.
Sometime love is doing what is best for the child and not what is best for you.
Her daughter can know that both mummy and daddy will always love her and be there for her regardless of where she lives on different days

I don't think one post is proof of anything is it?

Latemates - FGS I am talking about what I think is best for the CHILD.

Hereforlife - I am not basing it on one post. No it is not proof - but it IS a very real and very valid viewpoint which some people would do well to listen to.

Yes very real but Sumum has also said she realised her daughter could have had the same propblems if she had stopped her living with her dad.
There are also many instances where children really suffer by not seeign enough of their father.
I have read many stories and have friends who even as adults have never got over the distress and feeling of abandonment by not being able to see their father enough.

In responce to the child not suffering when mother dies I think the poster was meaning that the child would suffer regardless of it it was the father or mother that died and not necessarily worse if it was the mother

death is not ideal under any circumstances but children can and do survive growing up wihtout a parent due to death.

in this case, the mother wont be lost or dead. she will simply be living with her fewer days per week than at present. how can that be wrong?

her mummy will always be there whether or not she lives with her 100 per cent or 50 percent or 20 per cent of the time.

surely it isnt about who she lives with daily basis as to whether mother /father is there for her and she feels loved /supported by the mother / father?

if you apply that argument then a NRP can never have a full and good relationship with a child - which just isnt true.

or the parent who goes off to war / work away can never have a good relationship with the child.

it is about far more than the daily living arrangements.

sumum and dd have a great relationship now.

she says any issues may or may not have been due to not living with her - you just dont know.

for anyone to say to another person "i cannot live without you [living here every day with me]" is a tremendous burden - if it is actually meant in a physical way.

it becomes emotional blackmail.

if you dont live with me - i will suffer. i love you too much to allow you to live with someone else.
that makes the child feel burden of guilt. that she has to stay to stop the mother going into some mental decline? (not saying is case here - but in the scenario of telling child "i cant live without you here mon-to fri " it would be

it just isnt true.

yes the mother (or equally the father) may feel bad/guilty/miss the child .

but they need to look at the bigger picture, practicalities etc and discuss those.

eg "if you move to live with dad you will have to change school" (not necessarily bad thing)

WOW !! thank you for all the replies, have been to college today, after another sleepless night and this is the plan for now . . . . .

DD to remain with me and her school, which is also a faith school, so lots of connections with friends/church friends in the community.

Dad to have DD 3 out of 4 weekends Friday p.m and to school on Monday a.m.
Also an evening out in the week.

Ex husband is adamant he won't live in same town and as of next week is moving to be near 'new woman' so yes there would be another 'mum' on the scene !!?? not sure how I feel about this to be honest.

We have both agreed to listen to DD and talk with a third party /therapist and try to help DD with this awful situation, and yes I will listen to her and eventually if the situation doesn't improve, and this is what she really wants . . . .without her decision being influenced by others, I would have to let her go for her happiness .

Dad is more than capable of caring for her, but perhaps I need to look at my own relationship with my Daughter. At the time of his affair/leaving I too was an emotional wreck, and to be honest know that I was no help what so ever to the anguish of my DD, she missed her Daddy, and I wanted and missed my husband .

I hope with the increased contact and help sorting out all the emotions, we can work together to get back our happy bubbly 6 yr old.

I think you need to look at this slightly differently and look at how your DD is acting rather than what she is saying. My guess is that at 6 she is scared and angry about what has happened. Her world has fallen apart and she is looking for ways to make that okay. She will have told herself a story about the situation that makes sense to her, but may be very far removed from the real situation.

She may believe, for example, that mummy sent daddy away or that daddy left because of mummy. Young children are very very sensitive to non-verbal communication. Given her dad had an affair, she may well have picked up on his gradual distancing himself from you and blamed you for it. Alternatively, she may be scared that she is 'losing' her daddy and be trying to cling on to him - he left her as well as you when he moved out and he's creating another 'family' and she may feel left out. If daddy is having a great time without her, that can feel very personal (daddy is happier when I'm not there).

I think that 6 year olds behave in a whole variety of ways in reaction to the things that are happening around them. They often have their own logic and make sense once we understand the whole picture of how the child sees things but without that picture it can be hard to make sense of it. I think at the moment you are seeing the symptoms but have no real idea of the underlying issues. I think what she is saying is only a tiny fraction of what is going on and by focussing on the words you could be missing a lot of the story.

At the end of the day, she is only 6 and she simply isn't old enough to make these sorts of decisions. It is up to you as her parents to work out what you think is the right thing to do. And it is okay to look at what you want as part of that process. I think it is okay, particularly where you are unclear, to say how you feel, as long as you are clear about your feelings as opposed to their needs. The risk in not stating your feelings is that your child thinks you are indifferent. So, 'I would feel very sad if you were to go to live with dad but I am a grown-up and your mum and so I want what's best for you and if we as your parents decide that it's best if you live with your dad then I will do what I can to make that happen because I love you.'

I have been following this thread with interest since I posted. It has created some good points for discussion.

I am surprised that there is no one else in this position (or no one else who is posting an opinion anyway), and I think that points to how even in today's society where many marriages fail it is still an unusual situation.

About my own situation, it is hard to put everything in a couple of posts and I would not like the op to base any decisions on my experience alone - I am just offering an opinion. (I do think secretskillrelationships speaks a lot of sense)
my dd'd problems I believe were a result of the divorce, we just split up no affairs just didn't get on anymore, she was devestated and continued to be so for most of her childhood. I do believe she would have struggled with self harming wherever she lived. She also was with her granddad when he died of a heart attack which further traumatised her.

It was as I said very hard being without her, some weekends I didn't see her as she got older because she was doing all those teenage things kids do with friends. Also it was hard explaining to people why she didn't live with me, I felt ashamed and a unworthy mother, parents evenings were a nightmare with teachers judging me. People judged all the time because it is an unusual situation, and I found that hard. I didn't know her friends or their families and often wondered what they thought of me giving away my child. I am saying how I felt about all this and at the time as bad as I felt I went along with it as I thought it was the best thing for dd.

It was only very recently I asked her about her feelings about it, she had become a mother herself and dgs was 6months old. Previously we had never talked about it, just ignored it like the elephant in the room, it was just to painful to discuss. However I decided to ask her over the phone and she said I had made a mistake, she said she now considered herself too young to have made that decision and was always waiting for me to insist she came home(she called my house home even though she hasn't lived here since she was 11). I cried and cried, I was quietly crying while on the phone but after sobbed for hours. I/we had made a huge life changing mistake.

Now we get on great, she lives about an hour away and we see her every couple of weeks, just off there now. we talk almost daily on the phone.

In the end things are good but it's took a long while to get there, she is nearly 23 now and I will never know how things would have been if she had stayed with me.

Latemates Fri 25-Mar-11 12:05:58
Daddy did not choose to leave his daughter!
Affairs are adults buisness not the childs...

Hmmm .... i'm not sure i agree with this. Dad chose to have an affair - the result of which was going to be to destroy his marriage if he was caught out. The reasons behind the affair may be many and varied - but he went into it of his own free will, and knew the consequences of being caught would possibly be to be separated from his daughter.

that doesn't mean that he should be punished by not having a relationship with his daughter ... the OP seems to have acted in a very mature way despite his affair .... but the separation from his daughter would seem to be a direct result of his own actions.

but back to the original question ... i've been in the same situation in terms of having to face the question. When my DS was 7 (last year) he went through a thing about wanting to live with his dad (100 miles away - currently sees him once a fortnight ... dad's choice not mine). We separated when DS was 14months old - so he has no concept of what living with Dad means .... and Dad had a new baby arrive just before this all kicked off. He'd also been behaving a bit badly at the time (attitude rather than anything more serious)

I initially went to pieces and considered talking to ExP about a trial over the summer ... but then decided that I knew my DS best, and that it wasn't the right thing at that point in his life. Sat him down and told him that right now he needed to be here with his mum and his friends, and that when he was a bit older and more able to make his decisions - if he still wanted to then we would discuss it - but for now he was going to stay with me. This went surprisingly well - and that night at bed time he gave me a big hug and said "I didn't want to go and live with Daddy .... i just thought maybe its what he wanted as he said he missed me - I'm glad you told me I couldn't".

Just food for thought - i'm not saying that is what is going on here .... but it might be part of it :)

I'm picking up on Sumum's post as she is surprised that noone in OP's situation has replied. Some of you will be aware that my 11 year old daughter has made the decision to live with her Dad for the past 6ish months.

Sumum, you sum up exactly the "shame" that I feel and will continue to struggle with.

As for daughter and Dad, I don't think things are rosy. I've had to go round to his house today as she is trashing the place as she didn't want to go to a small boy's party that her Dad wanted to take her to. I am at a total loss about how to deal with the whole situation and suspect that exh and I may be doing more damage to our daughter than we ever intended.

But I digress, I had been following this thread and have to say that I think that the OP has it sorted! She sounds as though she has negotiated a compromise and is going to see how this goes. If I had any advice, it would be that I think my daughter has "learnt" to play us both off against each other as whenever I disciplined her my ex would come, pick her up and take her back to his house. Try to set some sort of ground rules.

But I honestly do think that the OP is dealing with this situation really well

Thanks everyone, and WIRRAL the playing off against each other is so true, and yes, if she screams long and hard enough, Daddy comes to get her !! This needs to stop, but as I said in an earlier post, I am also heartbroken and sometimes just can not cope with DD's pain as well

Thank you SECRETSKILL . .I have gained a lot from your post.

SJLTM - I think you have made a very good decision myself. I also think it's good that you are going to stop Daddy picking her up when she's kicking off - this is definitely not a good thing (likewise in reverse).

I'm also really, really sorry that you are heartbroken - it's hard enough, but to now know he's moving to be with the new gf is really shitty.

I have had a couple of really upsetting break-ups from long term partners and I am really glad that there weren't any children involved because I had enough trouble dealing with my emotions and what I needed without having to deal with a childs needs as well. In some ways it's good because you have someone else to 'pull yourself together' for, someone else to get on with life for and be cheerful - but in other ways it's so bloody draining that you just don't always have the reserves to deal with things the way you otherwise would have.

You have done your best - that is all you can ever do, don't beat yourself up about what you could or should have done.

I think you would both benefit from having an outsider to talk to - whether this is a counsellor or a trusted friend/aunt etc.

You are doing really well - hang in there x