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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Exh and dd having problems, any suggestions?

4 replies

lilibet · 15/11/2003 14:14

My three children spend every other weekend with their Dad, but dd who is 15 next month has more or less stopped going. She says that he is more interested in spending time with the boys, they watch football on the tv all the time, and she feels left out. She now has a job on a Saturday afternoon, giving out flyers round town for an under 18's night at a local nightclub for which she gets paid a fiver and after that , she goes and blows her wages on crap, bits of make up and jewellery etc which is to me perfectly acceptable behaviour for a girl of her age!! I am concerned that the longer her and her Dad go without spending any time together the harder it will get for them to get together. Hate the bastard myself but don't want them to loose touch. So I've been nagging her a bit about going up at weekends even if she feels that there is nothing for her to do. Got down to be using the very unfair line 'I wish my Dad was alive then I could go and see him' (emotional blackmail but in a good cause, I feel) so she has asked him can she stay this weekend. He has said that as long as she is doing this job, she can't spend weekends with him, if she is with him, she is with him not working, she can't do both. Her getting this fiver is a bit of a godsend to me,as it may not seem a lot, but it stops her pestering me for a fiver to go into town every week and I don't have that sort of money spare to give her. She also gets free entry and free drinks at the under 18's night, which is the equivalent of another fiver. And of course she enjoys doing it, I'm not going to tell her to give it up. He will not discuss this with me, I have tried. He says that its all or nothing. She either spends the whole weekend with him or she can't go. And its me that is more worked up about this than her, she is quite calm about it. I had a fantastic relationship with my Dad, and dd and her Dad got on so well when she was young, I want her to have the same kind of thing with him (bastard tho he may be!). Any brilliant ideas?

OP posts:
Clarinet60 · 15/11/2003 14:41

I don't think it's going to work, lillibet. Your ex is not your dad so it's never going to be the same. She might have begun to see the same faults in him that you yourself recognised. I think at 15 she is old enough to know who she wants to spend her time with - maybe she'll be ready to resume more contact when she's older. I don't think forcing it will help, it will only make things worse. The fact that he is telling her 'it's all or nothing' gives me a big clue as to why she doesn't want to go there! He sounds like a bit of a T~#t to me and she sounds mature enough to recognise it. Shame, as he's her dad, but I don't think there's anything you can do about it. Sorry.

marialuisa · 15/11/2003 18:59

Think you have to let her be. It's not as if he's offering to pass the tenner she loses out on to her is it? My sisters also lessened contact with their dad at this age, again, I think they began to see himn for what he was. TBH, he's not being fair IMO.

Norma · 15/11/2003 19:29

He is being stupid and immature to insist that she spend all weekend with him. She is old enough to make up her own mind and if he is finding it too much trouble to try to understand her feelings then I can see why she would rather do other things. Don't worry, it doesn't spell the end of their relationship. It's just a sign that your daughter is becoming independant with a very sensible mind of her own.

Janstar · 15/11/2003 19:47

She is 'voting with her legs', as children of 15 will do. I wouldn't worry about it. At this age lots of girls don't relate to their dads very well, even when they are living in the same house. She already has a relationship with him, you have made sure of that already, and now she is old enough to resume that at any time.

As has been said, he is not half the man your dad was, by the sound of it. So he might not be as crucial to your dd as your dad was to you.

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