Is it normal for 6 year old not to want to stay at her dads?

[BelleBoyd]

My DD has stopped wanting to stay at her dads. She usually goes once a week with her 2 year old brother. They've only been staying over like that for around six months and for a few weeks now hasn't wanted to go.
She says she misses me. I'm not sure what's going on as ex h isn't brillantly reliable person anyway. She says he doesn't let her get up in the morning till he wants to-not sure what time that is. Last week she stayed up till 11 saying she was ill which never happens at home even if she is ill. But after being back home a night she was fine the next day.
I don't want to force her to go and she has said she hasn't wanted to go for a while but didn't want to hurt his feelings?!
Have tried to talk to him about it and have encouraged him to talk to her about it but I don't think he has. He says it's not up to her if she stays or not but I'm not happy to ignore her wishes on this.

Yes, it's normal for children to go through periods of resisting contact. How is your relationship with her dad? How would you propose to resolve the situation?

We try to be amicable but unfortunately find it difficult to get along if we're together for any length of time. He's very unreliable and can be explosive ( verbally). The only thing I can think of is to let her decide if she wants to do sleepovers and she how it goes. He doesn't have any suggestions.

Okay so you know she doesn't want to do the sleepovers. How are you going to encourage her in the longer term? Or would you be happy with no sleepovers?

Well she said yesterday that she would do once a month but I'm not sure she understands time that well and also I'm still unsure whether she really wants to or she sees that as a compromise to save her dads feelings. I'm not either going to encourage or discourage as I'm not certain he looks after that well -she often comes back tired/emotional/ill..

She needs your encouragement and support. She's six. That far, far too young to understand the implications of severely limiting the relationship she has with her father.

Is it possible that she's picking up on your feelings?

Yes is possible. I'm not sure not sleeping over would limit her time with him though as when they do sleepover he says he's too tired to have them beyond 2-3 hours the next morning whereas if they haven't stayed he would accept seeing them for a longer period in the day. I do encourage him/them to see him but it's a struggle as he only wants to see them for a few hours at a time. Says he's too tired or ill usually to do longer.

offers no practical advice but stops to roll eyes at his claim of being too tired to have them for long if they've slept there.

Oh my asterisk use made it unintentionally bold

It sounds more like she is oicking up on her father's actually shite parenting than the op's opinion of his shite parenting.