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!
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.