^{Originally published on BabyCenter.com February 3, 2016}

For my daughter the words, “Do you want to spend time with Daddy?” often elicit tears and shrieks. I don’t want to say she doesn’t like me, but I’m clearly not her favorite parent. In fact, there are times when it seems like she’d rather be alone than have me in the room at all.

That’s not to say there aren’t times when we’re buddies. If she’s napped well during the day and my wife isn’t around, she’ll play with me, dance with me, and genuinely enjoy herself. But if she’s tired or Mommy is an option at all, she usually wants me to keep my distance.

Do I feel slighted about this? Well, maybe a little bit at times. It would be nice sometime for her to squirm out of my wife’s arms and run to her Daddy. But overall, it’s more of an amusing quirk than anything else. It takes a lot more than that to make me seriously jealous.

It’s easy to shrug off almost anything as just a phase when kids are really young. While I’m sure my girl will always have a strong connection to her mother, I know there will come a time when my wife will be able to hand her to me at night without eliciting tears and screams.

Hypothetically speaking, though, what if the phase doesn’t pass? Or, to go further, what if it gets worse, to the point where she becomes more hostile to me and more resentful of any reminder that she has a parent not called Mommy? I’ve considered that situation, and my conclusion is that it wouldn’t change anything.

As far as my view on parenting goes, I don’t actually need my kids to like me to find it rewarding. It certainly helps if they shower me with love and affection, and it would definitely sting if they didn’t, but as much as I love the validation, I’m not in it for that.

My goal as a parent is to make sure my kids have plenty of opportunities, live rewarding lives, and grow up to be people who add something positive to this world. If I accomplish that goal while sticking to my own values, I can live with my daughter occasionally not wanting a bedtime kiss.

While I look forward to dancing with my daughter at her wedding and spending a lot of one-on-one quality time over the years, sometimes it feels like she’ll always fuss and cry whenever she’s in a room alone with me. Even if that were the case, it wouldn’t matter.

When it comes to the big picture, my daughter’s happiness is my happiness. That means that even when she’s cuddling up with Mommy and getting as far away from me as possible, I win as long as there’s a smile on her face.

_{Featured Image: Peter Griffin}