I loved this whole article. My daughter’s father and I are divorced so we live in different cities (4 hours drive away!). The hardest thing for me to hear is, “I want my daddy” because for one daddy’s not here and also I can’t get him here or take you to him so calm down. I’m not proud of it but I’ve snapped at her. Even worse, years ago, when her dad and I (mostly I) were hating on each other (okay all me hating on him but that’s another story and we thankfully resolved it), I got so angry one day from her saying she wants to live with daddy that I just said “okay let’s call daddy and tell him you’re gonna live with him.” And I called. And I told him to please explain to her why she couldn’t live with him because I knew he had no interest in raising a child. Of course this only hurt my kid and I felt bad but I thought maybe she would stop asking me why she couldn’t live with daddy because it wasn’t my fault. More recently, we were actually visiting her dad about a week ago when his mother (who he lives with) got on my last nerve and I stormed out of the house with just my purse and nothing else. I didn’t even have shoes on and it was the middle of the night. I drove around for hours, parked, cried because my daughter didn’t respond to my texts and besides that nobody even called to see where the hell I went and what was going on. Around 8 in the morning, my daughter texted me and said she had been up all night because she was scared I wasn’t there and her phone had been dead so she had to wait for someone to wake up to give her a charger. I asked her wasnt she happy being at daddy’s? She said she didn’t want to be there without me. Later that day, I was sitting downstairs and overheard the grandmother, from upstairs, ask my daughter something about staying there (to be clear, this woman has some issue with me and rarely welcomes me into her home) and my daughter said, “not without my mommy!” And when we left that day, we wordlessly snuck out without so much as a goodbye to her grandmother, which I admit is petty. But what was great is I didn’t say I want to get out of here without running into grandma again. It’s like she just knew or she also wanted the same. And she’s cold to her grandmother because of the way she treats me. Even though I do try to tell her to be nice to her grandmother. Sometimes I find myself saying bad things about her. It’s hard not to. The woman is nuts. But my point is, hearing her say that she didn’t want to stay without me just made me feel so good. I realized no matter how bad things might seem, my girl has my back. She’s only 8. There may come a day when she asks to live with daddy again and I hope I remember this incident in the moment so I can remind her of how she loudly proclaimed she won’t go anywhere where mommy isn’t welcome. :)