The Cameo Appearence

As a divorced dad with two daughters I can get resentful when my teenage daughter Sarah spends limited amounts of time with me. She comes over to my house and does what I call a cameo appearance. What usually happens is she arrives at my house and spends a few short hours with me. Just as we are starting to enjoy our time and settle in she says to me, “When are you going to take me home?” It seems as if she needs to rush home because she is afraid of missing one minute with her friends because they might suddenly find new friends to hang around with. This just happened yesterday. I celebrate Thanksgiving on the Friday after the holiday. It makes it far easier to have my kids with me the entire day. On Thanksgiving Sarah and Grace were at their aunt’s house with their mother. I picked them both up at 12:00 on Friday and brought them back to my house. I had twenty people at my house including my sister and her husband who were very excited to see my kids. My sister left at about 8:00, and things were starting to wind down. My daughter Sarah came to me and said to me, “When are you going to take me home?” I replied “Take you home, I thought you were going to stay over night and I would take you home in the morning.” That was the plan until her cell phone started ringing. I must say I felt unimportant and somewhat displaced. I have never been one to express any displeasure with my daughter’s requests, even though some of the things that she has wanted to do at times did not make me happy. I guess I’ve always been afraid of voicing any disapproval at all because I was concerned about driving her away from me. This time I had the feeling that I had to say something, and I did. We ended up in a discussion and I expressed my disappointment that she was leaving, and made a few other comments, that communicated my unhappiness. I did take her home, and things were fine on the ride. We spoke like nothing happened.

Let me let you in on a little secret. A divorced dad will never get anything from his children including respect if he doesn’t request it and sometimes demand it. The guilt, the pain and the thoughts about being a failure are all too real for me as a divorced dad. I suffered through these emotions and feelings for many years after my divorce. They don’t change one very important piece of this puzzle, and that is that I am my daughter’s father. I am her father, and I can place demands on her, make requests, and tell her how I feel regardless of any negative reaction that she may have. Sarah may continue to make cameo appearances at my house but I will continue to tell her that I don’t like it.

Our children will grow up fast. They will always look back on their childhood and wonder if we cared, or if we were apathetic. They will want to know why we let them get away with certain things and draw conclusions in their minds about our strengths or weaknesses as a father. Avoiding a confrontation because we are afraid that we are going to alienate them now may only lead to a relationship later that only involves a cameo appearance.