Dad Says “You Chose Mom, So This Trip’s for Adults”, Kids Shut Down

“Sometimes the consequences of decisions hit the ones you love the most.”

You’ve spent your life savings: $165,000 to fight for shared custody of your two kids. For years you had 50/50. Then your ex remarried and the game changed. The older child told a court-appointed therapist: “I want to live with mom and only see dad every other weekend.” The judge listened. You lost.

Now you’re planning a nine-day trip to Spain and France with friends, your wife and her sister. The kids want to come. You tell them: you chose Mom’s house. You chose the majority time. The consequence? You’re adults going without the teens. They’re upset. You’re wondering whether you’re the [jerk].

Now, read the full story:

Reading this, I felt your pain and your frustration. You invested effort, time and money. You believed in your role and you fought for a relationship with your kids. To face rejection when you thought the system would side with you, then to have your kids ask why they’re excluded, must be heartbreaking.

At the same time I noticed the weight of a message you might be sending: when kids pick a parent, what follows is not only change but cost. This feeling of disconnection mixed with boundary-setting is a textbook tension in family breakdowns.

Here’s what’s really happening: you’re navigating a complicated mix of custody, relationship fracture and emotional consequence. The core tension is who gets time, who feels emotional loss, and how decisions echo.

Parent-child estrangement often results when children feel unheard, disrespected or overly influenced by conflict. According to clinical psychologist Dr. Joshua Coleman, “one out of four fathers is estranged from an adult child … they’re 22 % more likely to be estranged from a daughter.”

Your story mirrors that pattern: a father pursued custody, a daughter declared she wanted to live with her mother, now distance followed.

Custody research also matters. A systematic review found that while joint physical custody (children spending frequent time with both parents) generally led to better emotional and psychological outcomes for adolescents, the real difference was shaped by parent-child relationships and inter-parent conflict, more than schedules themselves.

Your scenario: you had 50/50. Then things shifted when the children voiced a preference. The court accepted that. That means you lost not because you failed at parenting, but because the children made choices. You’re now treating those choices as cause and consequence—but children’s choices sometimes reflect coping, not betrayal.

Let’s break the dynamics:

1. Financial and legal cost of custody battles. Spending $165,000 is enormous. Research shows adversarial custody disputes can damage parent-child ties even when legal victory occurs. This means your investment might have had hidden relational trade-offs.

2. Emotional logic versus opportunity logic. You tell your kids: “You chose Mom therefore you miss this trip.” That ties deep emotional rejection to a travel restriction. Relationship experts warn: When parents frame trips as reward/punishment tied to past behaviour, children feel manipulation, not freedom.

3. Child agency and age. You referenced your kids as “young adults” at 14 and 16. In developmental psychology, adolescents (14-16) still require parental inclusion, not exclusion due to past choices. Excluding them carries long-term risk of further distancing.

4. Travel as relational bridge. Studies of post-divorce families suggest shared activities like travel can rebuild connection if they’re framed as inclusive, not punitive.
Here’s what you can do:

• Initiate a genuine conversation with each child: “I want to understand what made you prefer Mom’s home. I want to hear without judgment.”

• Offer them a future trip option: Make travel inclusive, not exclusionary. Suggest: “If you commit to assist with planning or saving, we can include you next time.”

• Reframe your narrative: This trip isn’t “because you chose Mom you’re out.” It can be “This was organised now, and next time you’re welcome.”

• Readjust your messaging: avoid making consequences sound like punishments. Focus on connection.
  Wrapping up: Your feelings of hurt and fairness make sense. But the message you send matters more than your justification. A father-child relationship rebuilds through invitation, not isolation.

Check out how the community responded:

“You made it about punishment, not the kids.”

“Some nuance about choices and age.”

“Underlying truth about estrangement research.”

You’re in a difficult space: you feel hurt, justified, and protective of your resources. But your kids feel excluded, blamed, and grown even younger than their age. While planning a trip without them is not inherently wrong, using their past choices as a pass to exclude them can widen the fracture instead of healing it.

Where do you go from here? Will you invite them into the future rather than exclude them? And how would you want them to remember this phase of your relationship 10 years from now?