Quote From: jcmorseDid some of you even watch this show?!
He is not asking them to call him Mom. He told them that they can call him by his new name, they can call him "Aunt", they can call him whatever they are comfortable with.....except "Dad".
His children don't want to call him anything. They want nothing to do with this man, who, by their OWN ADMISSION was a good father, a role model, and their best friend!
The 21y/o has serious issues, and definitely needs some therapy. She should not be allowed around the younger daughter until she can keep her negative opinions to herself. She can certainly choose to have her own opinions about her father, but for her to express them to an impressionable 13y/o is unacceptable. In my view, the younger daughter needs her parent, and has an opportunity to renew her relationship with that parent, provided that no one is sabotaging that possibility with snarky comments and disdain. All she's worried about is who's going to walk her down the aisle! Why CAN'T it be her father, in his new form? If she truly loves him, it shouldn't be a problem. And if that's her biggest worry, she's years away from being mature enough to get married anyway. Marriage doesn't allow it to be about ME ME ME....to make a marriage work, you have to be able to think about and provide for the needs of someone other than yourself.
The 13y/o needs help as well, with a qualified therapist who has dealt with some of these issues before. She needs to understand the pain that her father suffered for so many years in order to give her the dad she needed. She needs to understand that he can still be there for her in the same ways he was before.
As I said in another post, this man did not handle the situation well. But his older daughter is making things worse, and Dr Phil should have addressed that. This man was being defensive because Dr Phil was attacking him because he didn't cry and was allowing him to be attacked by an adult child that he had raised, in front of an impressionable younger daughter! How is THAT going to help anything? They need positive intervention and guidance before this poor 13y/o loses any chance she may have had to have a reasonably good relationship with her second parent.
If you had watched the complete show you would have heard the daughter say he called her on the phone and said for her to call him "mommy". When she refused her told her to call him "aunt"
By the way, is this the 'new' psychology where you change your life and expect every one to change with you, when parents change their modus operandus, and then expect their children to go along. Parents shoud be role models for their children, not vice versa.
That's right those children who knew this person as their dad all their lives are so selfish for not accepting 'her' because he/she decided to become someone they knew nothing about. Come on now let's just blame the little brats for all this mess. America has a sickness and it's called "the hell with the children".
But I guess that this is the 'new' America, where if you are not accepted for your choices, then the kids can just go to hell. By the way how many children do you have?
(Original Air Date: 04/29/08) Christina, 21, and her younger sister, Carlie, 13, say they had a close relationship with their father, Michael, until two years ago when he decided to transition to a female. Michael was a police officer, soldier and loving parent who lived his life as a male for 40 years. Now, he wants his daughters to call him Mom, because he says Dad is gone, but they refuse. Michael, who prefers to be called Kayla, says she wants to explain to her daughters why she's living as a woman, but they've never given her the chance. The last time Christina saw her father was two years ago when he showed up at her work in lace and blue jeans to break the news that he's transgendered. When she sees Kayla onstage, does she greet her with open arms? Next, Carlie joins her sister and father. She says she wants her old dad back, but will she feel the same after seeing Kayla? Can the father-daughter bond be turned into a mother-daughter one? Be prepared for an emotional journey as two daughters struggle to understand how someone they say loved so much could hurt them so badly. Talk about the show here.
