Play the long game. Ultimately, she’ll make up her mind about you

Divorce is awful. A family is ripped into two and your child suddenly has two homes. What is sadder than this is putting the child in the middle and forcing your child to choose. Your daughter loves her mom and dad equally and you will never know the pain she feels when she sees the two most important people in her life are no longer together or worse, still fighting.

For the dads who have sole custody, you have to be both mom and dad to your child. You have to be the nurturer and the disciplinarian. That’s hard work. But for the dads who have less than 50% custody, you might feel you need to make up the time by doing extra things or be extra nice. You fear that disciplining the child in the little time you have would diminish the quality of that time. If you feel this way, resist the urge to be the more popular parent or the fun parent. Your short term wins could turn into long term losses.

Resist the urge to be the more popular parent or the fun parent. Your attempts to be the popular one will backfire as she will quickly realize that your parenting approach hasn’t adapted from when she was a child. You have to be a part of her whole family while she is with you. That means being popular and unpopular, strict and lenient, disciplinarian and coach, mom and dad to her all at the same time.

At the age of 6, your daughter’s needs are still relatively simple. They want to be loved and supported. It is easy to impress them with adventures and diversions. You exposing them to different things should be an approach to broaden their experiences, not an attempt to outdo the other parent. The discipline you use (or not use) should be a consistent approach to guide their behavior in determining what is right and wrong; not to curry favors because you are more lenient than the other parent.

When she gets older, your daughter’s needs are going to be more complex and self-focused. While they still need your love and support, what they really want is your acceptance of their decisions. You doing nice things to distract them will have little lasting effect and result in no impact on them. Your attempts to be the popular parent will backfire as she will quickly realize that your parenting approach hasn’t adapted from when she was a child and you will alienate yourself from her even more. What she needs is less of a supervisor and more of a mentor. What she needs is less of a disciplinarian to make her feel badly about poor choices and more of a guidance counselor to help her make good ones. This is why fathers should never be afraid to lavish both praise and criticism on their daughters. If you are short on praises and long on criticism, your one-sided approach will end in your daughter gradually tuning you out. If you have never disciplined your child when she was young, she will unlikely listen to your disapprovals when she gets older.

So whether you have full custody, shared custody or no custody, you have to be both mom and dad to your daughter when she’s with you. It’s not her fault that she has two homes and one parent is always missing. You have to be a part of her whole family while she is with you. That means being popular and unpopular, strict and lenient, disciplinarian and coach, mom and dad to her all at the same time. Don’t assume the other parent will shore up where you have not.

You became a dad for life. So, play the long game. Ten, twenty or thirty years from now, you want to recall moments of laughs and tears, not regrets. Ultimately, she will make up her mind about the father you’ve been to her.