“Hey John” Advice Column: Daddies and Daughters

Hey John,

My husband and I have two girls, ages seven and eleven. Both are well adjusted good students and basically good kids. We are worried about what we can do to help with their present and future self esteem. Also, how do we reduce the chances they will be involved with inappropriate activities when they reach their teens?  In today’s over-emphasis on sex, how do we protect them? – Worried Mom and Dad

Mom and Dad,

Your question is a common concern of caring, properly protective parents everywhere. When I penned the following article (Fathers and Daughters), I had a slew of young teenage girls coming through my office with much older boyfriends. Additionally, one of the parents often needed a serious tune-up, more commonly (but not exclusively) the fathers. They were bringing their troubled daughters into see me in order that I might “fix” them. In other words: “you do my job for me.”

I responded by adding to my counseling work with the girls to some ideas for the parents. Although I wrote this focusing more on the father, obviously it applies to the mother as well. I share the following with you:

It is the ultimate Daddy Fear (Mama’s as well): You hear through the grapevine that your sweet thirteen year old daughter is seeing a nineteen year old boy. Two worlds of maturity and relationship expectations collide. Few parents, if any, wish for such an occurrence.

From The Counselor’s Log:

She was seventeen and he was a brute. She very reluctantly came in with very obvious scrapes and bruises. She explained that “because of my big mouth,” he shoved her out of the car at 30 mph. Because she “loved” him so, she was adverse to any warnings from a counselor. Another girl, just barely sixteen, was in love with twenty year old Johnny. They had been sexually active from the start of their relationship.  He was her first. She was his twentieth. Crying, she told me she was grounded because she got caught sneaking back in at 4 am. She sobbed, “We didn’t even have sex that night. We laid around and just talked and talked. He listens to what I have to say. He makes me feel important.”

For any counseling “rule” there plenty of exceptions. There are good, loving, attentive parents whose child goes astray. Also, it must be noted that a mother’s influence on her daughter is of utmost importance. That being said, I find a great many dysfunctional teenage girls suffer from, at best, inattentiveness of their fathers. Some men, when they divorce their wives, divorce their children as well. Other men may be very busy with work and trying to support their family and have little time to spend with their children. Besides, with friends, computers and iPhones, it would seem as though they don’t really need us anyway. But they do.

Despite these good reasons and excuses, the rule is this: girls need a positive male in their lives that will listen to them, talk to them (vs. lecture them), and make them feel important.

This may be construed as mildly sexist, but girls need their Daddies.  Protect your daughters from harm — you need to be the most important male in their lives.

Ideas/Suggestions

• Ask your daughter’s opinion of things.  The purpose is to see how she thinks—and let her know you consider her opinion worth considering.
• Remember, conversations with your daughter are not to change her mind.  She likes a goofy political candidate?  Merely ask questions, and let her talk.  The purpose of most discussions is not to change her mind and prove to her she’s wrong.  Rather, it is to show her you care about what she has to say.
• Divorced Daddy?  If you park her at home while you work, what’s the point of having her visit?  Pick her brain for what she’d like to do.  Have good conversations, less TV and have some fun. If she has activities back “home” (Mom’s home) that are important to her while she’s visiting you, take her back for the event(s).  In doing so you are saying to her, “If it’s important to you, it’s important to me.” It’s a sacrifice, and kids need to know we are willing to sacrifice for them.
• Don’t shy away from proper discipline.  We are trying to give her a model of a good male. That includes being strong and brave when we need to be. Provide her with good moral guidance.

Regardless of our daughter’s age, she will always be our girl. Even at twenty-five with a child of her own, it is not merely our right but our duty to provide insight, guidance and love to our child. A casual compliment means as much to her at twenty  as it did to her when she was a little girl.

Never stop being a good father and male role model, regardless of your girl’s age. Help her feel important, loved and needed, and always take good care of her.

You don’t want some dysfunctional guy stealing her heart? You steal her heart.