How can we help my bonus daughter?
This may be a little long so I apologize in advance. I have a 6 year old bonus kiddo. I have been with her dad for about 5 and half years. We have had 50/50 custody pretty much the whole time except the first year she was in school because we lived over an hour away from her school. We moved closer to her school so we are doing 50/50 again now. When she was really young She would go through phases of not wanting to go to Dad’s and then not wanting to go to moms but for the last 2 years she hasn’t been doing that For the last few months, she has been not wanting to come here all of a sudden. When she comes here, she cries the whole time cause she wants to go back to her mom’s. We try talking to her and asking her what has changed to where she doesn’t like being here now and she just says “i don’t know” or “I miss mom.” We have tried letting her go back to mom’s early some weekends, and it doesn’t help. We have tried having her doing video chats with her mom a few days when she is here, and that doesn’t help. We used to do one week at dad’s and one week at mom’s, so we switched to a alternating 3 day/4day schedule to see if that would help, and it doesn’t. We all get along well so I don’t think there is an issue of like parental tension between the households (we sit by each other at school events and go to fairs and stuff together all the time). There is kind of different parenting styles between the two houses. At dad’s house, we try very hard to “gentle parent” so we don’t yell alot and use more of teaching then punishment for discipline. At moms house, there is less structure and routine and things are a little more chaotic over there. (I’m not saying one is better than the other, I’m just explaining how things differ between households) at dad’s house, we have a hard time getting her to eat, and at moms she eats. We’ve tried talking to mom about this and she says she eats and states she usually has donuts for breakfast and chips and cookies and things like that for snacks. We typically try to encourage healthy eating habits and the things she’s getting for meals and snacks at moms house are considered “treats” at dad’s and are for special occasions and not an everyday thing. (Again, not saying moms doing something wrong, we just do something different). I thought maybe the differences were what’s bothering it but it has always been like that and her not wanting to come is so recent.
My bonus kiddo also has no problem being over here if we are “doing something.” If we are going to the zoo, park, or to a grandparents house or anywhere, she has a blast and has no problem being here. But if she has to actually be at the house her or if we ask her to go play for a bit, she starts crying saying she misses mom and wants to go back there.
This last time we had her, we called her mom to come over and try and talk to her. When her mom is around, my bonus kiddos whole mood and attitude changes. She starts talking like a baby, clinging onto mom, if mom tries to set her down, she bends her knees and won’t stand up and hangs onto moms shirt or pants and refuses to let her mom set her down. We couldn’t even get her to talk to us about anything cause she was just trying to climb and cling onto mom the whole time. My bonus kiddo acts this way everytime her mom is around (school events and when we go do fun stuff all together). When we told mom that she doesn’t do the baby talking or acting babyish unless she’s around, she told us that bonus kiddo is always like that with her and doesn’t know how to get her to stop. My bonus kiddo acts like two completely different kids at each household, which is also hard because she does things here she doesn’t at moms at vice versa so we can’t co-parent because we don’t even know what’s going on.
We are trying to get her into therapy to see if that will help figure out what’s going on. I’m just wondering if anyone else has gone through the same thing and what helped you?? Thank you!!