Hello IMs!
For those of you who are not with the father of your children, at what age are they supposed to go visit their daddy by themselves? I have a 5 month old and her daddy comes visit her every Wednesday, and the baby and I sleep at his place on weekends so they can spend time together. So far it has worked our fine but I wonder at what age I should stop coming with her. I wished I could always be there in case she needs me but I guess a day will come when she should go by herself.
Thank you in advance! :)
5 Replies
As I would let my parents babysit my son as soon as he wasn't breastfed I think that's a fair time to start leaving dad alone with baby. Even if you are breastfeeding if the feeds are more than an hour apart I see no reason not to leave a 5 month old alone with there dad for an hour between feeds. If you start doing it in little amounts it will make you all feel more comfortable versus going straight to an overnight.
Why don't next weekend you go grab yourself a coffee or do something nice for yourself for an hour leaving them alone for a bit.
Dads can comfort just as well as mum, in fact I know more than a handful of awesome stay at home dads.
I think she means not being there at all.
Ive seen ideas about negative impacts later on if you do overnights too early or force it against separation anxiety I have to do more reading on it. I'm currently deciding this too for overnights, we're just over one and i think it will start soon. I wouldn't have considered it before one. If you're both working together and not rushing the child into anything I think it'll work out OK.
I agree with the first commenter.
Would you leave her alone with her daddy if you were still together?
Start off with daddy having short, regular visits without you present and use the time to catch up on some housework or do something for yourself.
I also think once a week might not be often enough. It's usually recommended that a child of that age has more regular contact for shorter periods of time. Such as, two or three nights a week for two or three hours a visit.
Start with them being without you present, and wait until both you and daddy are comfortable before allowing him to have overnights without you present.
If that's now, great! If that's when she's one or two, that's great as well. You and daddy both need to be comfortable and decide what is best for your daughter together.
(No one blinks if you leave a child with grandma overnight, so don't let someone say you can't leave your child with her daddy for the night because she's only young!)
Arranging coparenting visitation is not in any way the same as grandma babysitting for you.
Regular overnights away from primary caregiver under one have been shown detrimental to the child, security and attachment. Hence court won't order overnights before at least one year old
I left my daughters dad when she was one month old and she started staying overnights with him alone straight away. We were both comfortable with that. The hardest part was constantly having to express milk for him to take and then constantly expressing no when she wasn't there to keep up my supply. I'm really glad I did this as I felt he shouldn't miss out on time with her especially when he was perfectly capable of caring for her himself