“I feel like my daughter hates me.” The sentence sits in white text across the screen, and it is also the first thing Leah says in a TikTok posted September 8 on @caitlinandleahh, the account she shares with Caitlin, her daughter’s other mom. She says it with her cheek propped on her hand, a pink wall behind her.
“She never wants me,” Leah continues. “Always wants Mommy Caitlin if she’s upset. Mommy Caitlin if she’s tired. Mommy Caitlin. Just anything.”
Her example is an ordinary errand. “Every time we go to the shops and I pick her up, she pulls herself away from me and says, I want Mommy Caitlin. Go away,” she says. Her daughter is two and a half. Leah says she is aware of how that looks to the people around them, “even though she’s my daughter.” About twenty seconds in she shuts her eyes and presses her fingers against one of them.
“I’ve just had enough of it,” she says. “I know it’s just her age, but she’s my daughter and I love her. And I feel like she doesn’t ever want to be with me.”
She puts the preference down to nursing. “Rationally, I know it’s because she’s still breastfeeding, because she’s obsessed with it,” she says.
The caption shows how hard the video was to post. “Bit of a vulnerable post from me. I feel extremely embarrassed posting this,” she writes, adding that the feeling of her daughter not wanting her “has felt a bit much.” She also writes, “I know she’s young and eventually she’ll get out of it but it can sometimes feel a lot,” and puts a question to other parents who have been through it: “what age did your child start noticing both parents?”
The end of the 65 second video turns outward. “It’s okay sometimes to share that it’s not all sunshine and roses and that it’s okay to have a bad day,” she says. “Like, even just talking about it has made me feel a bit better.” Her last words are for parents in the same spot: “I’m sure other people are going through the same. It’s really, really tough.”
What the Parent Who Keeps Hearing Go Away Can Try
Leah’s own result is the place to start: talking about it made her feel better. The parent on the receiving end can say it to the other parent in the same specifics she uses on camera, the shops, the pulling away, the “go away,” so the two of them are fixing named moments instead of a general hurt.
She names two moments when her daughter asks for her other mom: when she is upset and when she is tired. A parent in her spot can plan one on one time for the other end of the day, when the child is fed and rested: a morning walk, bath time, one book that only the two of them read, with the preferred parent out of the room for it.
For the shop scene, the two parents can agree before they leave the house who is carrying her. The preferred parent can then say the handoff out loud, “Mom is carrying you now,” and step out of reach. Another option is a short errand with only one parent along, so there is nobody else to ask for.
For “go away,” the parent hearing it can have a line ready and say it calmly while staying close: “I hear you. I’m right here.” The two parents can also agree in advance that whoever is holding her keeps holding her.
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