I Was the Strict One

When we split, my kids were one and four. Babies, really. And the first thing I learned about being a separated dad is that you don’t start at the finish line of fairness — you start at zero, and you claw your way up from there.

I went from no access at all, to fighting for some, to years of slowly, grindingly increasing it — while the kids were still too young to have a say in their own lives. It was only when they were finally old enough to be asked what they wanted that it landed where it probably should have been all along: 50/50. Half a childhood spent fighting for time with my own children that I should never have had to fight for in the first place.

The parent of rules

Here’s the part where I have to be honest about myself, not anyone else. I was the strict one.

Not cruel. Not cold. I just expected the best from them — wanted them to do well, try hard, pull their weight. The trouble is, I expected it at the exact ages when all they wanted was to be kids. I get that now, looking back. At the time, working full-time and exhausted and asking my sixteen-year-old son for a bit of help around the place, I didn’t get it at all. I just saw the pushback.

And he had an option I didn’t. He had another house — one with no rules, no chores, no dad asking him to step up. So that’s where he went, full-time, at sixteen.

I’ll tell you exactly where that sits with me, because it’s a fine distinction and it matters: it didn’t break my heart that it happened. Teenagers leave; kids vote with their feet; I understand the pull of the easier door. What broke my heart was how it was done. That’s the bit I’m still mending.

One at each house

My daughter is different. She loves structure — needs it, thrives in it — and when she was fourteen or fifteen she moved in with me full-time. So we ended up in the situation no one ever plans for: one kid at one house, one kid at the other.

If you take one practical thing from me, take this. Don’t split siblings between two homes unless there’s a genuine problem between them. Mine aren’t a problem to each other — they love each other to bits, even if neither of them would ever say it out loud. And I’ll always wonder what we cost them by having them grow up under different roofs, missing the ordinary daily friction and closeness that makes siblings who they are.

What I’d say to myself, back then

You can fight like hell to be in your kids’ lives, win, and still get the fathering itself wrong in a hundred small ways. Both of those are true about me. Structure is a kind of love — but kids need room to just be kids inside it, and I was so determined to raise good adults that I sometimes forgot to let them be children first.

I’d have given anything for the whole-family household, the lot of us under one roof. But I was never going to fake a happy home inside an unhappy marriage — that’s its own kind of lie, and the kids feel it even when you think you’re hiding it.

So this is where I’ve landed: I was an imperfect dad who never, not for one day, stopped choosing to be their dad. I fought for the time. I got the big things right and plenty of small things wrong. And I love those two more than my own life — which, if you’ve read anything else on this site, you’ll know is saying something.