When Your Kids Don’t Want to See Their Dad (And You Wish They Didn’t Have To)

Here’s an excerpt from an email I received recently:

I have two incredible kids, ages seven and nine, and have been divorced from their father for a few years. The problem is, he is a complete trophy father when he is single, but when he is dating he is absolutely awful. The kids cry when the time comes for him to come get them, begging me to allow them to stay home. If they ask him if they can stay with me he gets nasty with them and hangs up on them, which he has done often, even calling them names at times. I have started taking my kids to a therapist, but I don’t know what to do about their father. Help! Please! I don’t know what to do, he won’t listen to what I tell him when it comes to the kids and how they feel.

My heart goes out to this mom and the thousands of others who could have also written this letter. This is a deeply painful situation that pushes almost every button in a mother’s psyche.

I’ll offer several suggestions for you to chew on. You may not like some or all of them; my opinions are usually pretty radical. I’ll trust you to experiment with whatever resonates with you and leave the rest. So here we go:

It would be easy for me to jump on the ain’t he awful bandwagon, and commiserate about how wrong he is for doing all these things. But I’m not sure how helpful that would be for you. If you are wanting empathy, as we all do at times, I’d encourage you to talk with sympathetic friends.

As for me ... I cannot tell you how to make their father listen to you.

I cannot help you teach your girls how to get him to listen to them.

What I may be able to help you do is re-calibrate your expectations of him with what he IS doing, and take your focus off of what he SHOULD be doing. And once you are grounded in what is real at this moment in time, any actions you need to take will become obvious.

So let’s start with what is happening. What can you count on him to do? At the risk of oversimplifying and over dramatizing, let’s say: partner with women who are not maternal or even cruel, ignore your kids when he’s in a relationship, get angry and defensive, call them names, refuse to listen or communicate constructively, etc. Not that he’s going to be this way forevermore, but for now, that’s been pretty consistent, right?