I won't get into the whole specifics of my situation so here are the bullet points:I never wanted kids.I ended up with an EXTREMELY challenging kid.We spent a solid 4 years fighting almost daily because of her behaviour and my inability to manage my emotions and accept my life as it was. Her worst traits were utter defiance and uncontrolled aggression towards everyone around her.I had an undiagnosed mental illness (recently discovered) that made my ability to cope with the challenges of parenting even more impossible, allowing me to convince myself I was a terrible parent and terrible person for doing the things I did and having the thoughts I was having.I'm a lot better now after seeing a therapist over the last 2 years.So my daughter is old enough now that she's starting to piece her world together, ask questions, and actually expects legitimate answers. She recently asked me why I go to the "doctor" so much because I'm never really sick. I didn't have a pre-planned answer at the time so I just told her it's something kind of private that I don't want to talk about right now. She seemed okay with that but I thought about it for a while and I wondered if it was something I should tell her, and if I do, what is an age-appropriate way to explain my situation to a 3rd grader?Obviously I'm not going to tell her I didn't want kids.Luckily she's aware of the concept of therapy because we all participated in a group program called SNAP a few years ago. The moderator of our group was named Debbie.What I thought of saying was something like this:"You know how we used to fight a lot and I used to get really mad and yell? Well, you know how I don't do that any more and I stay a lot calmer when we have fights? I knew I was getting too mad when we were fighting so I decided I needed to talk to someone like Debbie, but just by myself, so I could find something like a SNAP for dads to help me be a better dad." via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2nqwKUS
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