If men are from Mars and women from Venus, then a daughter will seem like she’s from another galaxy to her father at times.
Dads, have you ever been in a conversation with your girl and suddenly she seemed to transform into a giant Rubik’s Cube, then your brain began to turn to mush and smoke came out of your ears?
You throw your hands up and beg for your wife’s help.
Sure fatherly love comes naturally but the communication is anything but instinctive. You say tomato, she says “you’re a clueless old fart who has no idea who I am, what makes me tick or what I really want out of life.”
At least that’s how it feels in our heads, right?
What happens if we get these “growing pains” conversations wrong?
If I’m too distant and fatherly, she grows up desperately seeking attention and dating the lead guitarist of an alternative rock band.
If I’m overly affectionate, she destined for a life of disappointing relationships because no man can live up to Daddy.
If I yell or am too strict, she’s painting her nails black and obsessed with taking sepia photographs of abandoned buildings.
If I’m not stern enough and give into every whim of hers, I’ll spend her teen years sitting in a lazy boy by the front door at 1 a.m. texting her feverishly to come home as my hair goes gray.
Where is the balance? There’s no course or handbook for this….or is there?
Learning how to truly express yourself and effectively communicate isn’t just about getting to the top of the company ladder or making new connections, it’s about the everyday conversations that weave the fabric of your life. The type of men that women date and have long-term relationships with are also directly related to the kind of relationship a girl has with her father.
Dr. Linda Nielsen, an expert on father-daughter relationships says fathers generally have as much or more impact as mothers do in the following in terms of their daughters’ achieving academic/career success, creating a loving/trusting relationships with a man and being self-confident and self-reliant.
Good communication isn’t always instinctual, it often it takes practice and a bit of self examination. Don’t let the best and most critical years go by assuming that everything will “work itself out.” Take the steps necessary to develop your communication with your children and watch the difference it makes it both your lives.
Everybody remembers when Dale and Brennan asked one another “did we just become best friends?” in the movie Stepbrothers.
From the timeless “frog-in-the-leg” during the teen years to the inebriated insult at the holiday dinner table as adults, so many factors go into the sibling rivalry. There’s the obvious, age, birth order and gender, but what about the less obvious, inherited neuroticism, who got the good genes vs. bad genes and which kid stuck around home long enough to really get the good stuff from mom and dad.
