parents in competition

When Your Child Has a Favorite Parent and It’s Not You

November 27, 2012

This is a common developmental occurrence. Child prefers one parent to the other. It can vacillate, or it can seem like a perpetual stream of “dadadadadadadadada” or “mamamamamamama” to infinity and beyond. Here’s how this plays out in our life, and how we handle it. 1) Encourage love of the other parent. I’m with SuperBoy and SweetPea all day long. When AA comes home, I want to encourage them to be excited, clap, hug, go wrestle him/leap into his arms. I practice saying “da da da da da” all day long with our almost 8 month old daughter. I’d be delighted if it was her first parental address, as it was SuperBoy’s. It’s not a competition. Conversely, AA encourages SuperBoy to take a break during their evening playtime to come give me a hug, talks up how much he loves me, hugs me in front of him, and always backs me up when I issue an executive maternal order (No, you may not eat the lotion.). 2) Don’t take it personally. SuperBoy adores his father. A-DOR-ES him. The world stops when he comes home at night, and he wants him to put him down, look at his baseball cards, help him eat dinner, brush his teeth, and read him a story. Yes, there is a little daylight’s worth of room for me in there, and it’s not as though he expressly shuns my company (sometimes), but the majority of it all is dada-centric. It’s been this way for about a…

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