Our single author’s daughter is 15 and fully fledged. It’s not like fathers are more relaxed than mothers…
We are in Valencia, daughter and I, language school. The plan is for her to go to school in the morning and learn Spanish, then in the afternoon we’ll go out together and see the sights of this very beautiful city. “No,” says the child, she met Caitlin, an American from Singapore and cooler than me. Plus Montana from California and Shaana from Texas. “Even cooler than you.” “I arranged to meet them on the beach afterwards,” she says the next day. There’s a party and she finds her way there alone. I grunt and comment that she’s never been to this city before. She doesn’t understand what I want from her. She says there are two options. Number one: “I’ll go and you’ll agree.” I ask about number two. “I’m leaving and you don’t agree.” I think she can’t just run around in a strange city, after all, she’s only 15. She says she comes from St. Pauli. I can’t object to that, so I say, “Take it off.”
And then I rarely see her in the remaining weeks, she sleeps with me, at least most of the time, sometimes with Caitlin, but from that day on I actually become a solo traveler. As a result, I was in an extremely bad mood for two days – because I realized that we have a temporary relationship and that time is slowly running out. I feel like an old studious traveler who has to cover up his aloneness with the knowledge of some churches. I solve it on the spot by drinking a lot, which helps briefly, but ultimately only makes it worse because I’m an alcoholic traveling alone. I’m happy that the child has so much self-confidence that he can run around alone in strange cities– and yet the overall situation is making me exhausted. Because I’m still the supervisor. And that feels exactly as it sounds: awkward and in the way. And no one wants to do that. Not you, me neither.
So she goes to the beach and because I can’t tell my ex-wife that I lost our daughter in Valencia, I follow her.I know: uncomfortable and embarrassing. I’m trying to be cool, but the truth is: When my daughter isn’t there, I never sleep and I’m so nervous that I go to the bathroom a thousand times.
Getting to know boundaries and lots of love
This is also the case in Hamburg. However, I allow anything if the child can convince me with arguments that what she is doing is important. Even if I internally reject it. She thinks she has to party on the weekend? Go for it. How can you get to know your limits if you don’t exceed them at the beginning. We don’t have a time limit for getting home. What is that supposed to help? If all her friends are at a party, if she does okay in school, if she doesn’t make any stupid decisions (she will definitely make stupid ones), if she keeps going to sports, then everything is fine.
The other day I googled: “What is the most important thing about raising children?” Answer: love for the child. Good, I thought, I’ll do that. When I tell her, “Child, I love you very much,” and then want to hug her, she says “Vadder,” Hamburg slang, “I know that,” and turns away. I think that’s all right. Children tend to get on my nerves, and mine is no different – so on the one hand I make announcements, but on the other hand I also allow myself to be convinced if the announcement is crazy. And then I’m the last one to insist.
Apart from love, two things are important: respect your personality. Remain credible. I can’t say, “You don’t drink alcohol” and then meet up with my buddies and drink one beer after another. What I can say is: “Don’t drink so much, you’re only 15.” And then I can explain to her that alcohol is a cell poison. In my experience, this approach works. But things are changing, because a few years ago I said: Don’t fall out of the window, don’t play with fire. Today I say: Don’t take drugs you don’t know.
Education without advice
She sometimes responds: “Everyone else is okay?” And that’s also why I’m sitting on the beach in Valencia and I’m nervous. It smells like grass. I have no idea where the child is. I bought two cans of beer to relax. It only half works. I trust her, I don’t control her, of course not. Even though it’s hard for me (God, it’s hard for me). At home, I listen to every siren and pray that it has nothing to do with her. I pace back and forth in the apartment like a caged animal. Ultimately, I become my mother and my grandmother at the same time. Having responsibility and then slowly giving it up is the hardest thing there is.
I have no idea how the others do it. According to the Federal Statistical Office, there are 239,000 single fathers and 1.33 million single mothers in Germany. As far as my ex-wife and I are concerned: everything is in flux. Originally planned as 50:50, the support shifted more and more towards me over time. It just happened that way, but it suits me well. Ultimately, I want to spend as much time as possible with my child. I never had any doubt that it could go wrong. I think parenting is the easiest thing in the world. I have never understood the “parenting guide” phenomenon. If you treat people with respect, as equals, then it will be fine.
If my daughter wants to go to her mother, please go ahead if she wants to stay there for four weeks. So we talk on the phone almost every day, the mother and I, and everyone is always up to date with the children. We have the best relationship of all non-relationships, and whenever I have a problem with the daughter or am very happy about the child, I call my ex-wife. So I type a WhatsApp message to her: “The child is on the beach and I have no idea where.” And she sends me a message: “Breathe.” Then: “Ommm.” I think it’s easy for her to talk; in the end she’ll still accuse me of the child drowning.
The summer of disconnection
My ex-wife was always cooler than me. When our daughter rode the chain carousel for the first time, at what felt like a hundred meters high, I almost went crazy because I was worried that some bolt would break. Her mother: “Let her do it.” And I always let it go, after all, the world is not a cocoon, the child has to go. But letting go is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. So far I had settled comfortably into our father-daughter relationship. We watched superhero films together in the cinema, sparred because we both do martial arts, we had a very friendly relationship. And of course she always thought I was super strong, super smart and super cool. Over. Now when we go somewhere together, she says, “Can you please keep your distance.” It feels like I have to keep my distance from myself.
At some point I can’t take it anymore and call her. After what feels like a thousand calls, she answers. “What?”, slightly annoyed. I’m worried, I say, big beach, lots of people, and she tells me to relax. She’s having a good time with her new best friends from language school. “Okay,” I say, then just do it. “But don’t get pregnant.” It’s the summer of cord-cutting, no question about it. But not for them: especially for me. I’m being cut off. And that happens rather jerkily.
Fathers, I recently read, supposedly encourage ambition, independence and confidence in their own competence in their daughters. Especially during puberty, the influence of fathers increases and becomes more important than that of mothers because they discuss problems less than work on solving them. That seems very cliché to me. On the other hand: I don’t like dealing with nonsense that the child can solve on their own, not because I have a great parenting approach, but because she often gets on my nerves with her teenage behavior. I read in the same study that women with a strong father-daughter relationship also supposedly make better decisions when choosing a partner later on and have more confidence in themselves because they don’t need male confirmation. After all, they already exist.
At some point my phone rings. “Vadder,” she says. She says I’m definitely still on the beach. How does she know that? “I know you.” And then she asks if we want to take the train back together. If someone were to ask later what the best moment in Valencia was: exactly that.