This is a serious question, mostly addressed to the adult women among us but also to anyone else who has a stake in the matter.
What did your father do for you/not do for you, that you needed?
Context: I have recently become a father to a daughter, with a mother whose father was not around when she was growing up. I won’t bore you all with the details but our daughter is here now and I am realising that I’m the only one in our little family who has really had a father before. But I have never been a girl. And I know that as a boy, my relationships with my mother and father were massively influential and powerful but at the same time radically different to each other. People say that daughters and fathers have a unique relationship too.
Question: What was your father to you? What matters the most when it comes to a father making his daughter loved, safe, confident and free? To live a good life as an adult?
I’d like this to be a mature, personal and real discussion about daughters and fathers, rather than a political thing, so I humbly ask to please speak from the heart and not the head on this one :)
Thank you
P.S Apologies if this question is badly written or conceived; I haven’t been getting enough sleep! It is what it is!
Thanks so much for your advice. Listening has come a lot in this discussion and I wasn’t expecting it… Why is that? is it because listening shows a daughter that she matters?
Everyone needs to feel heard. You won’t always be able to solve all their problems. But you can make them feel heard. And often that’s more important.
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I’ll add to what others have said about listening, don’t assume she wants you to solve every problem. My dad used to do that and it drove me crazy, especially when he’d point out out like it was so obvious. I often already knew the solution, but sometimes I didn’t like it or just wanted to vent before moving forward. I think it’s good for most relationships to ask, “do you want advice or is this just to get it off your chest,” before responding, not just with daughters, but I’ve noticed dads are particularly prone to wanting to fix the thing.
I think our lizard brain jumps to the fore and want to be like: “unga-bunga - problem! Me can fix with solution! It make tears stop!” when in reality, like you said, kids want someone they trust to give them permission to do the thing they know they need to do. They need to know they can come to you and be open and safe and loved.
Yeah, it’s like that as an adult too. Pretty much everything feels better when there is a sense of compassion and empathy but not always the case with solutions. It makes me think that in general as humans we are much more concerned with each other than we are with the world. Or even ourselves, perhaps.
Because listening takes energy.
Being a parent is like one part being a therapist, one part being the fence to the boundaries of exploration, and one part being The Doctor or some superhero in your child’s eyes capable of making magic and excitement happen. Fucking incredible, honestly.
What a great way of describing it. And what an absolute honour and privilege to be that for someone!
Because even though you might know what will be best for her - You might not have her big picture.
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You won’t always know what’s wrong with your daughter or what she needs but if you listen to her, like really listen, she will tell you which is so much more important.
In the long term, her being about to tell you things will make her feel safe and validated, it will strengthen your bond with each other, and it will help her develop the emotional intelligence to express herself in a healthy way that so many kids are missing these days. It’s win win win.