Things change quickly when someone is as irresponsible as your ex seems to be. Glad you are there for your daughter......she needs stability especially at this age.

Interesting, our daughter is in her 30's. I left my H 8 years 8 years ago. I would never say anything bad about her dad, but I would tell her the things that were happening. She had communications with him but very little because he doesn't communicate with anyone. I had been doing some research to understand what I had gone through in the marriage & came to the understanding that I had been dealing all those years with someone who has Asperger's. I commented to our daughter about it & was asking her what she had observed. She said that we had hidden much of the troubles from her. I always thought that she was closer to her dad than to me because I really didn't connect with small children though I did as she grew but had my engineering career I was focused on. I was so shocked when she came up with the comment about how lazy her dad was. I often wonder what brought about that vision of her Dad to her. It's interesting the way we see our parents that our parents really never know. I know the way I saw my parents wasn't easy to hide but I did a good job of working with them in spite of their dysfunctional ways.

I'm sure your daughter sees her Dad for what he is if my daughter could see her dad in ways I had no idea that she was seeing him. We don't talk about it very often as I don't want any openings where I might end up dumping my thoughts about him because I want her to see him through the relationship she has with him, not through the relationship I had & still have trying to finalize dealing with him.