Daughters Need Their Daddy!

The title of this article says it all. The relationship between a father and his children is extremely important, but that between a daddy and his daughter is priceless. My husband moved 800 miles away from us four months ago. It was hard on all of us at first, especially my son. Since my daughter had always been a momma's girl I figured she'd get through it all just fine. I am now finding out just how wrong I was. I've found a few ways to deal with it, but I am still working on making things easier for her.

With her being in Kindergarten this year she's learning so much and he's missing so much. I feel for both of them. These are a few things that I've done in order to make this whole process just a bit easier for her. My daughter calls her dad every single morning on the way to school. It's a great way to start her day. She also calls him every night before bed. She's just started reading in school and from time to time she'll read him a book over the phone. My husband was the one who usually put the kids to bed at night. At nighttime when my daughter calls he will sing her songs over the phone as if he were here. She looks forward to every night.

Another thing you can do is video chat. It's not as nice as having the person right there, but you can't get any closer than that. Not only can she hear her daddy, she can see him and that is priceless. She's able to show him things she's done at school or things she's gotten that she wants to share with him. This helps us out a lot because if she's upset or missing daddy we can just pull him up online!

The other thing we've learned to do which isn't as easy as the other things is to make sacrifices. There was a weekend where one of the towns near my husband was having a Daddy/Daughter dance. I just happened to stumble across it in my searching online and I was bound and determined to take her to Chicago so she could have a date night with her daddy. I drove her 800 miles one way in a weekend so she could do this. This was almost two months ago and she still talks about that night. It was very special to her and even though it wore me out it was worth it.

Mail is also very important when you are so far away from your children. We make cards or make up boxes of goodies to send and the kids both enjoy doing that. I also encourage my husband to send mail here for the kids to open. Who doesn't love getting mail?

Living hundreds of miles away from your daddy when you are a five-year-old girl isn't easy at all. We are doing what we can though to get her through it and so far it's working. I just hope I'm able to keep her content as we head into the next few months of this chapter in our lives.