Daughters of crap fathers

[swangloves]

My daughter is two and in a nut shell has a crap dad. We live very close by but he doesn't do any regular parenting, doesn't give me a penny, is always late , and us in the pub most of the time etc. He is my more like an occasional baby sitter but never takes her anywhere or does anything with her. Having said that - he pops in every couple of days so she sees him and obviously adores him. I feel so sad for her that she has such a crap dad and guilty too.

I just don't know how to handle this as she grows up. As she gets older he is likely to be very manipulative and slag me off ( his story will be he always wanted to be a full time dad but I broke up the family) I know this as he has a 15 year old son, and I lived through years of warring between him and his ex and witnessed him saying things to his young son which I deemed inappropriate.

Would love to hear in particular from any adult daughters of crap dads! Was there any thing your mum did/didn't do that helped? I'm terrified he'll twist everything in the future so she hates me :(

A friend of mine has a really crap dad. He would kind of drift in and out of her life and was pretty much an arse to her mum. From what I saw, her mum pretty much let him look after her and her sister when he wanted to (within reason and as long as he gave enough notice). There were times when he fell out of their lives and he stopped speaking to the both of them but he turned up again when she was in her teens, then her mum kind of stopped being involved, she told my friend to do what she wanted to- see or speak to him or not and never asked what happened when she saw him, she just told my friend to talk to her if she wanted.

So I would say that you should try to give him as many opportunities to be with your daughter as you feel comfortable with and as she gets older try to remove yourself from the situation as much as possible, this way your daughter should be able to make her decisions about him, and neither of you will automatically be seen as the enemy.