The Most Powerful Thing You Can Say to Your Child About Their Father

She sits across from me and begins our session with a pronounced exhale.

"Every time he visits his Dad," she says, "he comes back more shut down. More distant. I spend days trying to make him feel better. Maybe it would be better if he didn’t go at all."

I hear the exhaustion in her voice alongside the hope that her child can have a relationship with their dad that doesn’t leave scars.

Distance with our children’s Dad doesn’t undo the bond. It just makes it harder for your child to make sense of themselves as half of them comes from their father.

The truth is a child who is cut off from their father ends up searching for him somewhere else.

They'll find him in strangers who eventually let them down.

They'll find him in partners who choose work, or friends or alcohol over them.

They'll find Dad in themselves during their own self-destructive moments and say to themselves this is just who I am.

Because half of them is their father, so they are also searching for themselves.

When we erase that, we don’t erase the pain. We erase their map to themselves.

What actually protects your child?

Giving them a foundation where they can belong to all of themselves, even the parts that come from their father.

Tell them about when you first met their Dad.

Spot the connections of what you know in their Dad and what you see in them.

You are smart like your father.

You are hilarious like your father.

You are creative, just like your Dad. 

Tell them the stories about the beginning of your relationship. When your Dad and I first met, I loved his sense of humor and his intelligence and I love those parts of you. 

Because when you say that and mean it, you hand them back the parts of themselves they thought they had to hide. You are the bridge between what hurt and what’s still possible.

Between the story that ends in bitterness and the one that says, I love you more than I hate what happened.

When they look at you and don’t feel forced to choose, they get something most children of separation rarely receive, the freedom to love without the feeling of having to choose between two parts of themselves. Or between the two of you.

When your child can belong to themselves, they can then grow into a person who doesn’t need to chase approval, repeat patterns, or lose themselves trying to prove they’re worthy.

They get to belong to themselves, all of themselves, even the parts that come from a man who wasn’t everything they needed.

The part of them that came from their father needs to be seen, needs to belong, needs to be listened to, in order to find their inner compass which is hidden within this relationship.

You are giving them that every time you choose love over pain.

You are the one who commits to staying open.

You are the one who rewrote the story, certainly not to forgive the past, but to protect their future.

This is the lived, true expression of unconditional love. It’s not easy. But it’s one of the most powerful gifts you can offer.

Start with one story, one truth, one moment of connection and watch what begins to change.