Telling DD she has a father

[neverunderstandmen]

DD is 5. I split with ex when pregnant for a lot of reasons but mainly his substance dependencies. We are NC and he has since denied she is his.

As far as she is concerned she has no father which suits me fine but she is getting to the age where she is noticing that our family is different to others and has started asking why she has no daddy.

Has anyone been in this situation? Is it better to leave things as they are or try to explain it to her. How would you even start????

anyone??

Can you explain that her daddy was poorly and not very good at being part of a family? Pretending he never existed is going to make it hard to untangle in the future.

My dc's know a bit about their totally absent dad, I am see questions as and when they pop up. I sugar coat them quite a bit, they don't know he was pretty nasty at the end.

I have a friend who just said sometimes daddies aren't quite ready to be daddies and also aren't well enough.
that's simple enough to understand I guess.

I should have added in my original post - she also has now 3 half siblings which is a whole other can of worms and he lives abroad, so there's no chance of running into him or his family by accident.

I'm tempted to just sit her down and explain about biological fathers. She's quite advanced for her age and I've no doubt she would understand. I'm hesitant to use the word daddy as he has and will never be her daddy.

answer damn autocorrect.

images of autocorrect scrambling to attention to answer you godsavethequeeeen

Ah I understand

My dd is a surrogate baby btw so I did not use the 'mum/mummy' title.for her birth mother when she was little as it emphasised the relationship so I do apologise for my use of daddy

We said tummy mum, birth mum and birth mother at various stages and just explained her conception and birth simplisticly so I'd just say the same as I suggested but without the daddy word.

We said mens seeds make babies grow and all that so maybe say that her birth father wasn't ready or able to be one and you are so happy it did as YOU wanted her very much?

Soz if I'm rambling I'm on a Co codamol high from pain atm.

Similar situation.

I decided not to poison my son against his dad. I figure it isn't my job to do that and when he is older he will realise on his own he is a prick.

I went with the Scrubs Dr cox version of where babies come from (when a mummy and a daddy love each other they close their eyes and make a wish) - but my son was 3 when he started asking.

I then explained that he had done nothing wrong, that both me and his dad love him very much but his dad didn't think he would be very good at looking after him so that we decided that it was best if I just looked after him.

I am sure many people won't agree with shielding him, but I am happy with the decision I made.

Thanks for the replies

I'm in a very similar situation, my ds, 4yo has never met his father and probably never will.
I've told him the usual that all families are different and ours (just us 2) is perfectly valid.
I explained that his dad was very helpful, and helped me make him, but wasn't ready to be a daddy, so we decided that mummy would look after you. I've told him nto to be sad that he doesn't 'have' a daddy because he has mummy and various other relatives and friends of mine to love and support him.
He seems to have accepted this, he did go through a phase of calling me 'mummy-daddy' which he explained was as I looked after him as well as both parents
No idea if this was the 'right' thing to tell him but he was happy with this explanation, I'm sure he will ask more questions as he gets older and I'm buggered if I know how I'm going to answer those!

Following. I won't have to deal with this for a few years yet hopefully as DS is only 18 months but I do think about it a lot. How to explain it without him feeling unwanted etc. It's not the children's fault that some men are twats is it!!