Why My Son Says He Loves His Mom More (And What We’re Doing About It)
The macaroni had barely hit the plate when my five-year-old, Theo, looked across the table at me with total seriousness and said, “Dad, I love Mom more than you. Way more.”
My wife Erin froze with the serving spoon in mid-air. I tried not to smile. Theo wasn’t trying to be funny, though. He had that flat, matter-of-fact tone kids use when they’re about to deliver a verdict they fully believe in.
“Why’s that?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral.
“Because you shouted at me this morning,” he said, as if that settled everything.
I had reminded him, a little too loudly, to put his shoes on for the fourth time. In Theo’s five-year-old brain, that moment of frustration meant I was now the bad guy. And if I was the bad guy, he didn’t love me as much. Simple math.
The rude part came later. When I tried to give him a goodnight kiss, he turned his face away and said, “No. Only Mom. You have to go away.” Then he made a shooing motion with his tiny hand.
I’ll admit, it stung. I knew he didn’t mean it in the way it sounded. But knowing that and feeling it are two different things.
Erin and I talked about it after he fell asleep. She told me not to take it personally, which was helpful and also annoying. Then she said something that clicked: “He’s not actually choosing between us. He’s just learning that he has strong feelings and no idea what to do with them.”
She was right. Theo wasn’t making a real decision about who he loved. He was using big, dramatic words because that’s what his emotional vocabulary could manage. When he felt angry at me, the only way his brain knew how to express it was to say I wasn’t loved anymore. It’s a kind of all-or-nothing thinking that’s completely developmentally normal for a five-year-old, even if it sounds harsh.
The next morning, the same thing happened with cereal. He wanted Erin to pour the milk, not me. When I reached for the refrigerator, he grabbed the door and said, “I said Mom. Go away. I don’t like you.”
I took a breath. I remembered a line from our pediatrician’s advice: separate the rude behavior from the underlying feeling. The feeling here was simple—he wanted his mom to do the task because he trusted her routine. The rudeness was just the packaging.
So instead of arguing or lecturing, I said, “You really want Mom to help you right now. That’s okay. But we don’t say ‘go away’ to people. You can say, ‘I want Mom to do it today.'”
He didn’t repeat the phrase perfectly. He just grumbled and let Erin pour the milk. But I noticed he did stop telling me to leave the room.
That has become our working strategy. We don’t punish the preference, but we don’t tolerate the disrespect. The rule is simple: you’re allowed to prefer one of us for certain things, and you’re allowed to say so without being mean. But “I love Mom more than you” is off-limits because it’s hurtful, and saying hurtful things isn’t how we talk in our family.
We’ve also stopped asking him questions we know will trigger this behavior. Relatives do it constantly. “Who do you love more, me or your mom?” my mother-in-law asks him at every family dinner. It sounds harmless, but it puts him in a position where he feels forced to choose. And once he chooses, he commits to it fiercely. We now gently redirect before he answers. I’ll say something like, “Theo loves a lot of people. That’s how he works.” It takes the pressure off everyone.
One thing that has genuinely helped is not making him feel guilty. When he said he loved Erin more, I noticed my first instinct was to say, “That hurts Daddy’s feelings.” That might work for some kids, but for Theo it just makes him feel cornered. Guilt is a heavy emotion for a small kid to carry. It doesn’t teach him better behavior; it just teaches him that Dad’s feelings are fragile, and that’s its own burden.
Instead, I try to keep things light and matter-of-fact. I might say, “Well, I love you all the way to the moon and back, so you’re stuck with me.” It sounds cheesy, but it models the unconditional love I want him to understand. It tells him my love doesn’t shrink just because he’s having a rough moment.
Erin and I also swapped some routines. Theo attaches to whoever does the daily rituals—bath time, breakfast, walk to school. For the past few months, he was mostly with Erin, so I was the “second choice” parent by default. We decided to shift a few things around. Now I’m in charge of Saturday morning pancakes and the Sunday bike ride. It’s not a bribe—he still asks for Erin sometimes—but it gives him more time with me in settings where I’m not the one telling him to brush his teeth or put on socks.
The hard part is that this phase doesn’t follow a straight line. There are good weeks where Theo tells me I’m his best friend and invites me to his imaginary castle. Then something small happens, like I accidentally sit on his stuffed dinosaur, and he announces he’s moving to the other room permanently with only Mom allowed.
We’ve learned to ride those swings without overreacting. If we treated every rude comment like a crisis, we’d be exhausted by 9 a.m. We save the discipline for genuinely hurtful language. We let the preference itself pass without much commentary. “You’re mad at me right now. That’s okay. I can handle that.” Short and calm.
I still wince sometimes. I won’t pretend otherwise. When he says he loves Mom “a hundred million times” and I get “only five,” it stings a little. But I’ve started to see that he’s not actually measuring love. He’s measuring something else—who comforts him easiest, who he thinks will say yes, who he’s currently attached to in that given hour. It changes hourly, and that’s the point. It’s not about me as a father. It’s about him figuring out how to navigate his own feelings and preferences.
Last night, he said he loved Erin “to the moon,” and when I asked about me, he said, “And the stars. But not all of them.” I took that as a win.
We’re not at the end of this. No doubt he’ll tell me I’m the worst parent in the world someday, maybe next week. But I’m learning to hear “I don’t like you right now” underneath it, rather than an actual rejection. The rudeness still gets corrected. The love underneath doesn’t need to be questioned.
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