Daughter asking for a dad

My daughter who is 4 has started saying she thinks she wants a dad.  Well I am in my 30's and living with my parents.  So she has never known anything other than grandpa for a male role model.  Her biological dad doesn't know she exists, and I want to keep it that way.  He's not a good person.  So my question is what am I going to tell her when she asks me where her dad is?

[AnnieBrooke]

She might ask you for "a" dad, because of what she sees in the media or with her friends, but don't interpret this as her asking you at this point about the specifics of the sperm donor who helped to produce her.  She probably won't ask you where that specific guy is, until she gets big enough to understand the birds and the bees.  Regarding that, Dr. Laura gets this question on occasion.  She always counsels people to just be plain:  "Mommy made a mistake and picked the wrong guy, but this does not mean she is not thrilled to have you."  Something like that.

[tiredbuthappy]

Although I wonder... does a 4 year old need to know that a man is involved in the process? I think perhaps I would use Annie's response for an older child, who knows a bit more about such things.  

If it were me, I would instead respond that all families are different. Our wonderful loving family has you, me, grandpa and grandma. You can offer support by pointing out different families you know, or ones she knows through literature and TV. Focus on what she DOES have rather than what she doesn't. Your local librarian may be able to suggest titles, although they don't even need to be books specifically about single parent families. For example, after reading the beloved childhood story Corduroy, you can ask who was in the little girl's family. While the story is in no way about family composition, just happens to have a little girl and her mother. If she goes to preschool, ask her teacher how to discuss families. This can be a sensitive topic for some children of single parents, but if the class focuses more on the diversity of families, children have an easier time.

If you want to go a little deeper, you can also ask what she thinks a dad is. To almost any response she gives, you can reassure her that you or someone else in the family does that with her/ for her already.

[AnnieBrooke]

As I said, I'd only use Dr. Laura's response once she is old enough to get that she needed a sperm donor to be produced, not now at age 4.  I volunteered Dr. L's response because you asked what you will say when she asks you where her father is.  However, but I don't think she's asking this now -- it's a question that she might be a lot more curious about when she's 13 or 14.  Now, at 4, she sees nuclear families on TV or around the neighborhood, or maybe some friend has asked her where her daddy is.  That's about as far as she is probably taking it -- other people have them so why don't I -- and I wouldn't worry about explaining further about where her sperm donor is, for another decade or so.   If you are curious to know where her issue is coming from, there is nothing wrong with asking her why she wants one.  You might learn something light -- i.e., that she thinks dads read you bedtime stories, or her friend asked her where her daddy is, or something like that which would not be hard to handle.