# Attachment with daddy



## Ipswichbabe (May 17, 2005)

Hi

We haven't recently adopted a girl. She's 4 in January.
She moved in with us in january. Just after her 3rd birthday. Dh took 2 weeks off (paternity leave) and I'm still off on adoption leave. 
I feel as though we have all bonded well, she attaching better to me than dh. But then
She spends 24/7 with me. 
Why I'm posting is that my really worried about her behaviour around daddy.
Just recently the last 6weeks or so she's screamed at daddy if he's lifted her in the bath or got her out. Screaming crying and sobbin shouting I want mummy. 
But then she's really happy to play with him and have laughs at other times & say stuff like I love daddy!
Well last night I was sitting with her on my lap & I'm not well at the ment so when she stayed jumping up & down on me I couldn't take it, so dh said come & sit with daddy. She said no.he lifted her from me to his lap & she cried, kept pulling away trying to reach for me. 
In the end she came back to me. And settled. 
Moments later we head upstairs & she's having a rave with daddy down the hall way to see who wins the race. Daddy reads her a story & it's like the tears never happened. She's like Jekyll & hyde!!
But dh is getting really sad by this, he's he feels rejected when this happens like he's a useless dad. He says he's treading on egg shells all the time waiting for an outcry. 
It hurts me to witness it & I don't know what to do. 
Dh has never been with her alone yet, & I'm due to go back to work in November. I'm so worried & dh is dreading it. 
He goes to a Saturday toddler & dad group. Once per month but that's it. 
He says he feels like an uncle more than a dad as mostly his interaction is play time. 
She runs to me if she needs comfort after a fall or a bang. 

She goes off to nursery ok and loves it, never screams when I leave her, it's just at home this happens with daddy. So people think we are happy families when actually it's not!
She's sleeping through the night & eating well. 

Her back ground isn't abusive & she's never witnessed it. She was just not wanted by birth patents & family, had 2 different foster carers. 

Thanks xx


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## SWGirl (Aug 19, 2004)

Hi Ipswichbabe,  our son isn't adopted but we are both rejected by my son at times in favour of the other one and my poor partner certainly gets rejected more than me particularly if he's tired or his teeth are hurting etc.  I think sometimes he is just thrilled though to see that he can assert himself enough and communicate with us enough to have things done his way instead of the way we have planned.  sometimes it's actually quite amusing.. I.e.  Some evenings he won't let me feed him,  he refuses to eat and I think that he's not going to eat his dinner but then my partner offers him the same spoonful of food and he eats it without hesitation.  Each spoonful I try to feed him he rejects and each spoonful my partner gives him he accepts until he's finished the whole meal.  Some nights it will be me instead that is allowed to feed him and he won't let his Dad feed him but more often than not he wants his Dad to feed him and he wants me to put him to Bed.  He doesn't care who baths him at the moment but I'm expecting him to try to dictate which one of us does that also at some stage.  If he's left alone with either of us he's fine.  For example if I'm not here at bedtime and his Dad needs to put him to bed he's fine with that.  Is she ok about receiving all her comfort and recording help from your partner when your not home.  It wonder whether she could just be feeling confident enough to demonstrate that she has some control/say over what happens.  I wouldn't worry too much about it.  It sounds pretty normal behaviour to me for a three year old.


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## SWGirl (Aug 19, 2004)

I think when most kids are tired or  ill or when they hurt themselves they want comfort from their Mum,  their Dad will do if their Mum's not around but usually they want their Mum no matter how great their relationship is with their Dad.  I've seen plenty of children be passed from their Dad to their Mum because the child is reaching out for Mum when the Dad is trying to calm them down after a small fall etc.  Hopefully others will also reassure you that it all sounds normal.  On the plus side For Dads I think many of them are seen as the fun one.


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## Mummy DIY Diva (Feb 18, 2012)

My eldest is a similar age.  There's two issues I think one is that when really in distress like the other poster says kids want the lead care giver which is mum in most cases.  

My eldest has been home 5 months and used to do what you're describing.  For Her it was in my view simply power and control.  She wanted me to do it not DH however I knew hers and DH relationship would suffer if I let her dictate.  So for a few weekends in a row I really stepped back which was hard and I questioned if I was doing the right thing constantly but it worked.  I went out the room a lot and made myself busy sorting cleaning cooking etc  . When she'd shout or cry no mummy I want mummy I'd say mummies just x daddy will do it.  She'd say she'd wait till I was finished so I'd make the job take ages and she'd get bored and ask DH. After a while I'd say daddy does it or it doesn't get done you choose.  Then eventually I pretended to be out of ear shot and DH dealt with it completely.  This was over quite a few days not instant.  

It was hard but I'm glad because it forced her trust and relationship with dh. In some ways I liked the reliance on me but it wasn't right for us as a whole family.  It may not work for you but it was the only way for us. However that said routine is also queen in our house and my eldest is stressed if things aren't done in the same way.  DH also had to take on board that he needed to copy my teeth cleaning techniques etc or she believed her teeth weren't clean this applied to all situations.  Being lifted etc in a different way may worry her she'll be dropped etc. Good luck whatever  you do xx


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## GERTIE179 (Apr 20, 2005)

Yup it can be quite normal but if it's worrying you then I would try and do as Diva suggests and take a step back.

My LO has been home nearly 2years and can reject me if he's had more of a daddy time or vice versa. They need to build up trust for if you're not around.

Time for a girly day out or a spa day perhaps and leave daddy to it and see how they get on?

X


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## scoobydooby (Nov 5, 2013)

I went through this with my eldest daughter (nearly 3 yo) 3 months ago, she has been home for 12 months. I was the first she bonded with, during intro's I was the one she instantly attached to and she never let me out of her sight. Fast forward about 8 months and suddenly she wouldn't even let me pick her up without shouting at me. She wouldn't let me bath her, if I opened her bedroom door in a morning she shouted at me 'daddy no go away, mummy get me up!' and such things. It was heart breaking and I got really down and upset about it. This all happened about a month after her younger sibling came home to us who was extremely clingy to me, so much so that I couldn't even leave a room without her screaming the place down. So my time tended to be taken up completely on her, although I was still trying to devote time to our eldest so as not to make her jealous, but I'm sure this was what actually happened. My wife and I sat down one night and decided that we had to swap roles, no matter how hard it was to be, so I would back away from the constant demands of our youngest and do more of the looking after our eldest, and my wife would see to our youngest. It took time, and a lot of 'daddy will do that for you, mummy is busy' and such things, but now we're all closer than I could ever have imagined.

It's hard, and very upsetting but I'm sure this happens to pretty much every dad at some stage.


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## Barbados Girl (Jul 7, 2012)

Completely unrelated to adoption (but sometimes it is just a child thing), I punished my dad severely when my brother was born. I was nearly three. I refused to talk to him for weeks, apparently! Similar to Scoobydooby's experience.


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## Daddyboo (Paul) (Dec 24, 2012)

This should have come up at your formal review with the independent assessor - well it did at ours.

I had a rough start to my relationship with LO, I took 2 weeks paternity and 2 weeks leave to get the ball rolling then when I went back to work it started to go down hill and LO would only want to play with me.

We found that as I only had an hour before tea time - that was also play time and therefore to give mum a rest I would take over an play with her.

This carried on for several weeks until our bond became very much like 'uncle' as you stated, the SWs both said that our bond was wrong and we urgently needed to sort it out.

The answer is the opposite as what you'd think.  Don't let your husband spend alone time with her, at least not just yet, your LO doesn not trust him yet and your husband probably doesn't have any confidence either.

You need to start playing as a family when he returns from work, go on family walks, maybe with LO on a trike - if she asks for help let hubby do it.

Then when you get home let hubby join in with whatever you are doing - hubby should take over reading the bedtime story (for this was solely mummy's job for 6 weeks until I took over and now she rarely gets a look in), if you don't do one perhaps let him tsart it - let LO have a choice of 3 books and go from tehre.

If you go to LO in the mornings then let hubby do that on a weekend and give you a lie in, then hubby can do the morning routine including getting her dressed and breakfast.

Give it a few weeks and then start doing family days - it doesn't have to cost anything, a trip to the local park or out for lunch but make sure hubby takes over if she needs help feeding.

It's going to be hard, hard for you to let go and hard for your husband as their will be rejection, after 6 months we were a happy little family - then she went to school and regressed, not completely but we now have a little more flipping from one of us to the other - all good though.

You'll know you've done a good job when LO calls out for daddy in the middle of the nigt and not mummy - and make sure daddy gets up even though he works - you have a busy day too, and he needs to take some responsibility. ( - see below)

I'm now a happy daddy.

(Please do contact me if you want to talk / your husband wants to chat to someone who has been there, we are on the SafeBase course at the moment and the best thing is realising that the other adopters have had near enough the same experience as us.) 

Good luck, but don't rush things.

PS sorry about the spelling, I only had a few hours sleep and now I'm at work.

Edit:  I just want to add that our LO came from female foster carers, she didn't have any male father figures in her life before me and so the transition into what a daddy did or should do was even harder.


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## Ipswichbabe (May 17, 2005)

Thanks. Yes our little one also from a single lady foster carer. 
Since my first posting, things have improved. We still have days where 
I'm top but daddy is reading story and I'm walking out of room 
And generally at weekends daddy does more stuff. It's improving & time is 
The answer here.
Thanks for your replies.


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## Mummy DIY Diva (Feb 18, 2012)

Gkad things are improving x


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## AoC (Oct 28, 2008)

Well done you.


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## Ally Wally (Mar 1, 2011)

hi ipswich babe

i was just interested to know how you are getting on.  we had major problems with lo and daddy after he went back to work. lo rejected him big time. here we are nearly a year later and things have improved massively. daddy made sure he spent lots of time with him on the weekends doing alot of contact stuff...ie. carrying him places, walking holding hands, facing him in the shopping trolley etc.  basically anything except the buggy as he would be facing away from him. this made a huge difference and we slowly got less and less tears. 

saying all this, he is currently going through another phase of occasionally rejecting daddy. i am still struggling to figure out what the trigger is. (possibly as daddy does the 'dropping off' at nursery?) he is beyond excited in the evening when he hears his car...runs around shouting daddeee and runs to the door but the moment he comes face to face with him, he withdraws and becomes emotional. but we just carry on as normal and daddy will remain calm and still do the bath and bedtime regardless and by story time he is settled and extremely happy. i think he just struggles with the transition of care. but through trial and error we have worked out it's best if I calmly leave the room and come downstairs and let daddy carry on.

let me know how things are going...it can be very tough on the dads. at one point just after xmas i found daddy crying outside after yet another rejection and lo was crying too. super emotional for all involved.

xx


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## Barbados Girl (Jul 7, 2012)

I am really not looking back to my return to work! X


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