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!
This is all amazing advice, and I would like to add one thing to it, don’t lie to her. People casually lie to their kids all the time, “I don’t have any change”, “we are all out of cookies”, “don’t worry, grandma is fine and will be back to normal in no time.”. Kids aren’t stupid, and they remember way more than you think. They see you pull out the change you “didn’t have” at the next stop. They see/hear/smell the cookies that you are sneakily eating. They can tell something is wrong with grandma. Have some backbone and be honest, “no, we aren’t wasting money on trash toys”, “no, sugar this late will keep you awake and make you insane”, “grandma is not feeling well, but we are doing everything we can for her, and we are going to let her know we miss her and love her”.