Communicating with daughter for first time

[Kingsway45]

Hi all,

I am looking for some advice. I have an 11 year old daughter who lives on the other side of the world (NZ) who I have never met or spoken to.

I have very recently got in touch with her mum and between us we are going to ask the girl if she would like to make contact with me. I don’t want to upset the little girl or make her life hard or confusing. I’d just like her to know that she can talk to me, she can communicate with me and anything is possible in the future in terms of meeting and forming a relationship.

I guess I’m just looking for some advise as to how to start communicating with her? Her mum & I have agreed that I will write a short message to her with my contact details on so that the ball is in her court if she wants to get in touch with me. What do you think of this approach? As she is so far away I am a bit concerned about making things hard for her. I really do not want her life to be more complicated because of me. And then from my point of view does anyone have any ideas of how I can go about starting & building an ongoing relationship with her?

Thank you
B

The only thing I would tell you is that if you want to make contact, you must be absolutely reliable with it and never stop.

Even if she's not always receptive...she may be very receptive at first but she's at a funny age and this age, with girls, they blow hot and cold.

If she agrees to contact you, be very reliable. Always call when you say you will or she'll quickly lose trust.

If you have your first contact and she wants to continue, start by a regular weekly phone call or facetime. Keep it supeer-regular but if she wants to adjust the time of the call, go with it...you have to bend to her will because she's a child who hasn't had you in her life.

Send her small gifts...little things that she can think of as tokens of your affection. You can work up to a visit...you'd maybe go out there in a year, stay in a hotel near her home and have a week or so of meet ups.

Exactly what HennyPenny said. My dd had her father in her life albeit in another country after we split (she was around 11) and the hardest part was his erratic contact. He was a real s**t to her and sent her the nastiest texts sometimes (he's a mentally ill drug addict), but the part that she struggled with the most was not hearing from him regularly and his not returning her calls either in a timely fashion or sometimes at all.

And be prepared...11 turns into a teenager way before 13 and she will become erratic and blow hot and cold because that's what all teenage girls do at some point and the best thing you can do is just be there whenever she needs you and make sure that she knows that you are there irregardless.
You haven't mentioned why you are only just getting in touch when she's 11, and you don't need to tell us mumsnetters why, but your dd will absolutely need to understand the reason and please whatever the truth is, don't make it a negativity about her or her mother. Get some professional help to figure out how to present this if you need to.

Thank you very much for the advice it is greatly appreciated. I am quite nervous about making contact as I don’t want to cause any problems or make her life hard or confused. I know from her mum that she has been through a lot already in her short life.

A regular weekly call or FaceTime would be a good starting point & hopefully something that we could build on. I understand from her mum that she is strong willed & stubborn so I guess it can go well or it can go badly.

Her mum said she has an iPad with iMessage and could possibly message me that way if she chooses to. That would obviously be fine with me. There is an 11 hour time difference to navigate but as you suggested a set time to call or speak every week may be better than iMessages at random times. Maybe I should suggest this to her mum if the little girl does want to communicate with me?

Thank you again for your help

Name change fail OP? Might want to ask MN to amend if your anonymity from usual name is important to you

The reason no contact has happened up until now is that I thought I would be making life harder for all involved. I thought ‘what impact can I have from the UK to a little girl in NZ. Ever since the start there hasn’t been a day go by where I haven’t thought about her & wondered what she was like & if she was happy & healthy. I got to the point recently where I couldn’t be in the dark anymore. I want to get to know her & I hope she wants to get to know me.

I’ve no doubt it will be difficult due to the distance but I believe I can have some kind of positive impact & I want her to know that I do care about her. Not sure if this is making sense?

Thank you again for your help x

Hi, it’s ok thank you. I’m not go techie so wasn’t sure what I was typing when setting up the account. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.