'Do you still love Daddy?' / 'Do you still love Mummy?'
Versión en inglés · traducción en preparación
Este artículo todavía está en inglés. La traducción al español de México está en preparación.
a# 'Do you still love Daddy?' / 'Do you still love Mummy?'
Module 05 · Talking to children · Article 04 · v2 · 4–7, 8–12
Sunday afternoon, 14:36. You're in the car, driving back from your daughter's swimming lesson. She's seven. The pool bag is on the back seat, wet from the changing room. The radio is on low. You're at the traffic lights near the school. She says, into the windscreen, not looking at you, Mummy, do you still love Daddy?
The light turns green. You drive.
This article is about that question. It comes in a hundred forms. Do you still love Mama. Did you ever love each other. Do you love Daddy a little bit. Does Daddy still love you. It is one of the most consequential questions your child will ask, and the answer the child needs is not always the answer the parent feels.
What the child is really asking
The question is rarely just the question.
A child asking do you still love Daddy is usually asking one of four things underneath.
Am I allowed to keep loving Daddy? The most common, especially in the first year. The child has registered that one parent is gone, that the other parent seems hurt, and they are checking whether their continuing love for the absent parent is safe to express in this house. They want permission.
Was the love real? The slightly older child, asking whether their parents' love for each other was ever genuine. Children are looking, at this age, for evidence that love is durable. If their parents' love wasn't durable, what does that mean about love generally? About the love their parents have for them?
Is it possible that you'll get back together? The hopeful child, looking for evidence. The answer to this question, if it's heard as yes, will get held for years.
Are you safe to talk to about this? The watchful child, testing whether you can hold a complicated answer without breaking, or without becoming bitter. They're checking the temperature before they ask anything else.
The right answer is one that addresses the underlying ask, not just the literal question. Often more than one of these is alive at the same time.
The shape of an answer that works
The answer has three parts. The order matters.
Part one. What you do still feel for the Co-Parent. Not the romantic love. The thing that remains. I care about Papa because he's your father. He matters to me because you matter to me. I want him to be okay. Some version of this is almost always true, even in hard separations. The child needs to hear it because it tells them: the family hasn't completely come apart. Some thread of regard still holds.
Part two. What's changed. Honestly, but minimally. The way I loved Papa as my husband isn't there anymore. We're not in love the way we used to be. That kind of love changed. Don't elaborate. Don't justify. Don't explain the trajectory. The child can hold changed. They can't hold the story of the change.
Part three. What hasn't changed and won't. The love I have for you is not the same kind of love. It doesn't depend on what happens between Papa and me. It can't run out. It can't change. It's a different thing. This is the most important sentence in the conversation. The child is using their parents' marriage as the test case for whether love is durable. The answer is: this kind of love is. The kind that came apart was a different kind.
The whole answer is four or five sentences. Not a speech. Said calmly, with eye contact if you can manage it. The car is not the worst place for this conversation. The lack of eye contact sometimes makes it easier for the child to ask.
What not to say
A few things will cost you, even when offered with the best intent.
Don't say yes if you don't mean it. Yes, of course I still love Daddy spoken with anger in your throat is heard exactly as it was meant. The child files it as evidence that adults lie under pressure, that this house isn't safe to ask hard questions in, and that the answer they got cannot be trusted. The honest middle answer (I care about him, what we had isn't there anymore, you can love him completely) is always better than the performed yes.
Don't say no without context. No, I don't love your father anymore lands as a verdict. The child hears: I don't love this person and they're your father, which means you might also stop loving them, or that you're loving someone who isn't worth loving. Both readings hurt. Even when the literal answer is no, the answer needs the structure above: what's changed, what remains, what they get to keep doing.
Don't be ambiguous on purpose. It's complicated. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. It depends. These read to the child as the adult refusing to take responsibility for an answer. They're worse than the hard truth.
Don't promise what you can't deliver. Maybe one day we'll find our way back to each other. Unless this is a real, agreed possibility, don't say it. The child will hold it for years and re-open the wound every time it doesn't come true.
Don't give the unflattering reason. I don't love Daddy because he had an affair. Mama stopped loving me when she started drinking. The child cannot integrate this kind of detail at 6 or 8 or 11. The answer stays general. The reasons stay between adults.
Age by age
The shape stays the same. The texture moves.
Ages 4 to 7. Very simple language. I will always care about Daddy because he's your daddy. The way Daddy and I loved each other changed. The way I love you is different. That kind of love doesn't change. Then often: Can Daddy come home? The answer: No, sweetheart. Daddy lives in his house now. But you'll see him a lot. You can love him as much as you want. We're still your parents together. Repeat the same shape over weeks. Don't expect the child to absorb it the first time.
Ages 8 to 12. More nuance possible. I'll always have a kind of love for Mama because we made you together and we share you. The kind of love we had as partners isn't there anymore. We tried. It didn't work. What I feel for you isn't dependent on any of that. You get to love both of us exactly as much as you ever did. This age can also handle the sentence you don't have to feel the same way I do about Mama. That's not your job. Particularly important if the child has picked up that you're hurt.
The 8-to-12 child may also ask follow-up questions. Did you ever love him? When did you stop? Why didn't you try harder? Answer the first one honestly (almost always yes). Don't answer the others in detail. We loved each other for a long time. Things changed. The reasons aren't yours to carry.
The inverse question
Sometimes the child asks the opposite. Does Daddy still love you? Does Mama miss us when we're not there?
You cannot speak for the Co-Parent. The honest answer is the redirect. That's a good question to ask Daddy when you see him. What I know for sure is that Daddy loves you very much, and that's never going to change.
Don't speculate. Don't say I think Daddy probably does still love me a little bit if you don't know. Don't say No, Daddy doesn't miss me, only you if that might be projection. Stay on the ground you can stand on: the child's relationship with the Co-Parent. The adult-to-adult layer is not yours to narrate.
When you genuinely don't have warm feelings
Sometimes the honest answer is that you don't have anything resembling love left for the Co-Parent. Anger. Distance. Mild contempt. Nothing. The instinct, when the child asks, is either to perform love you don't feel, or to tell the truth and watch them flinch.
The middle answer is real, and it's almost always available.
I will always care about Papa because he's your father. I don't always feel warmly toward him, and that's something I'm working on. But I will never get in the way of you loving him. You loving him doesn't take anything away from how I love you. You get all of both of us.
That's truthful. It doesn't lie about your feelings. It also doesn't make the child responsible for your feelings. It protects their relationship with the Co-Parent without requiring you to fake warmth. Most parents can find their way to a version of this sentence within the first year. The earlier you can, the better the child does.
What you don't have to do
You don't have to convince your child that you still feel something for the Co-Parent. You don't have to dramatise a goodwill you don't feel. You don't have to use the word love if it doesn't fit. Care. Respect. Wish him well. These all work.
You also don't have to take the question literally every time. Sometimes the child asks do you still love Daddy and what they really want to know is can I go for the school trip on the weekend Daddy was supposed to have me. You can answer the second question instead. I think you're asking because you want to go for the school trip. Yes, you can. Daddy and I will sort out the days. You can love Daddy as much as you want. The trip is a different thing.
Children sometimes use the big question to access permission for the small one. Letting the big question live in the background while you solve the small one is sometimes the right move.
Closing
The question is asking permission. Whatever you say, the child needs to hear, by the end: you can love both of us, completely, and nothing about how I feel about Papa changes that.
That's the door you're holding open. Whatever shape your own feelings take. Whatever the history is. Whatever the question landed on top of. The door stays open.
Sunday afternoon, 14:36. The traffic light goes green. You drive on. I will always care about Daddy because he's your daddy. What he and I had isn't quite there anymore. What I have for you is different. That hasn't changed and it isn't going to. You can love him as much as you want. He's still your daddy.
She doesn't say anything for a while. Then she asks if you can stop at the shop for ice cream. You stop at the shop. You get ice cream. That's how this conversation often goes.