My Son Said He Loves Dad More: What I Learned About Rudeness and Loyalty
The four of us were sitting down to spaghetti on a Tuesday night, which should have been ordinary. My husband passed the parmesan to our six-year-old, who took it without complaint. Then, out of nowhere, my son looked across the table at me and smiled in a way that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I love Daddy more than you,” he said, matter-of-fact, watching for my reaction.
There it was. The casual cruelty of a first-grader.
I felt the familiar pang, that mixture of embarrassment and the absurd need to not let a six-year-old see he’d got under my skin. My husband tried to deflect, saying, “Hey, you don’t say things like that,” but our son just shrugged and went back to his noodles. He didn’t seem angry. He didn’t seem sad. He just seemed interested in what would happen if he said something that big, that final, across the dinner table.
This went on for about a week. Every day, he would find a way to rank us. “Daddy is the best. You’re number two,” he’d inform me while I was buttoning his school shirt. “I only want Daddy to sit next to me at the baseball game.” Once, when I wished him goodnight, he turned his face into the pillow and muttered, “I don’t love you, I love Dad.”
I won’t pretend those words didn’t sting. There’s a weird cultural script that says mothers are supposed to be the favored parent, the comfy lap, the first person they call for. When my son rejected this unspoken hierarchy with clear, unpleasant enthusiasm, I felt my own disappointment, and then the underlying worry: Is this normal? Is he doing this because we’ve done something wrong? Is he actually feeling hurt about something?
The more I sat with it, the more I recalled what I knew about kid development. Around ages five, six, and seven, children start to test their power in the world. They don’t have much control over their lives, but they have total control over their words. Declaring a favorite parent isn’t usually about truth—it’s about pulling a string and watching the puppet jump. The more we reacted, the more interesting the game became. And let’s be honest: I was jumping.
The first lesson I learned was the value of absolute boredom. When he announced yet again that he loved Dad more, I forced myself to adopt a flat, monotone response. “That’s nice,” I’d say, and then turn to load the dishwasher. I stopped asking clarifying questions like, “Why do you love him more?” or “What did I do wrong?” because every question gave the game more juice. I did not show my hurt because that was the prize he was looking for.
But I didn’t want to just ignore him. I wanted to teach him something about words without turning it into a lecture. So, after the initial storm passed, I started to check in at neutral times. While we were drawing at the kitchen table, not looking at him, I’d say something like, “You know, you don’t have to choose who you love more. You can love people in different ways, and it’s okay.” I kept it short. I didn’t push him to agree.
This felt unnatural at first. I wanted to defend myself, to prove I was just as good as Dad. I wanted to sulk, and sometimes I did sulk, but I tried to keep the sulking private. I understood that if I fought over this, I was confirming his suspicion that love was a competition.
Here’s where the grounded reality comes in. We had to look at the household dynamics to see why this was happening. My husband works longer hours, so he’s less available. When he’s home, he’s fully present—roughhousing, reading dinosaur encyclopedias, making elaborate LEGO contraptions. My daily routine is more managerial: homework checklists, bath schedules, reminders to put jackets away. I handle the nagging. I’m the enforcer of vegetables and clean underwear. Of course, on a purely hedonic basis, the kid is going to prefer the fun parent. If someone asked you to choose between eating a vegetable and eating cake, you’d choose the cake too.
But being the “vegetable” mom made me feel resentful. I remember a specific Friday morning when my son refused to let me make his toast because “Daddy makes it square, not round.” I threw up my hands and snapped, “Fine, then wait for Daddy.” He looked scared for a second before switching to anger. It was a low moment. I realized I was taking his developmental stage personally, converting his need for routines and control into my own feelings of rejection.
What worked wasn’t a big conversation or a “family meeting.” It was a shift in how we structured the evenings. We decided to create a new, shared ritual that belonged to me and him alone, one that didn’t exist before all the rudeness started. Every Sunday morning, we go to a nearby bakery and pick out one weird pastry—something we’ve never tried. It’s just us. I don’t force the conversation. I don’t ask about his feelings. We just eat and walk around the block. It was slow, but after a few weeks, he started mentioning it on the weekend. “Is today bakery day?” he would ask.
He didn’t suddenly flip a switch back to loving me more—that’s not how it works. One night, when I tucked him in, he gave me a quick hug, not his usual full-body lean-to-dad move. It was small, but it was something. The rude remarks have faded to about once a week, often replaced by a different type of testing: “I hate this dinner” or “You’re the worst mom because you won’t let me have a dog.” The specific accusation changed.
I’ve learned some practical things I wish I’d known on that first spaghetti night. First, recognize what’s happening: this isn’t about the other parent. It’s about your child exploring the power of rejection. Don’t engage in the ranking competition. When you tell them “No, don’t say that,” you’re validating that saying it is a big, powerful thing.
Instead, teach the nuance of love directly. Say, “I love you, and it’s okay if you’re mad at me,” or “I’m glad you had fun with Daddy; I like watching you two together.” These phrases model that love for one person doesn’t diminish love for another.
Also, look at the structure of your day. Is one parent the taskmaster and the other the entertainer? If you’re getting all the rudeness, you’re likely also getting all the demands. Try to rotate the boring chores or, more importantly, carve out a tiny, boring ritual that belongs to you and your child. Reading a chapter together, taking out the garbage together, or making a weird sandwich—doesn’t matter. It has to be low-cost and repetitive.
I still feel a small twist in my gut when he declares his preference loudly in front of other parents. It’s embarrassing. But I’m starting to see it for what it is: a clumsy attempt to make sense of feelings he can’t articulate, and maybe, just maybe, an invitation for me to prove that my love for him isn’t thin or fragile.
Yesterday, we were at the playground, and he ran up to me, face flushed, holding a dandelion with its head half-wilted. He shoved it at me. “Here,” he said. “You can take this.”
He didn’t say he loved me. He didn’t say I was his favorite. But taking the weird, broken dandelion and putting it in my jacket pocket felt like the whole messy, unglamorous point. The rude words have a way of passing, as long as we don’t let them write the story about who we are. We’re just learning how to say the same things to each other in different ways.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » My Son Said He Loves Dad More: What I Learned About Rudeness and Loyalty