Last week we observed that no one can nurture a child as well as his own or her own mother. In a similar way our job as fathers is to provide what our girls need to flourish—to become all that God created them to be. This episode examines two ingredients required by every daughter’s heart to be able to thrive.
Twenty years ago, I found myself wrestling with what to do about my exhaustion. I had five children at home, an elderly father with Alzheimer’s living with us, a growing church that had added staff and was requiring more of my time, and an increasing desire on my part to pursue a DMin degree to sharpen my ministry skills to benefit our church. What Ied me to my decision was something obvious; yet, it was something I’d never seriously considered. That is the fact that many other pastors could lead my church, and would lead it when I left. But no one can be a father to my kids but me. My decision was to cut back on the hours I was devoting to the church, and postpone the pursuit of my DMin 7 years until 4 of my 5 children had left home.
It’s been said that there are three categories of dads:
- Uninvolved dads (those physically gone or emotionally disconnected).
- Involved dads (most Christian dads fit this category)
- Strategic dads (those who proactively seek to understand what their children need from them to thrive)
This episode is intended for strategic dads who want to now how to help their daughter flourish. Strategic dads also have the benefit of believing in creation; so they know that God created males and females to be different, in order to complete each other. Therefore, we understand that some of the needs of daughters will be different than the needs of sons. Michael Farris, the proud father of 6 daughters and 4 sons wrote an insightful book entitled, What a Daughter Needs from Her Dad: How a Man Prepares His Daughter for Life. He underscores a very important principle about understanding a daughter. He writes, At the foundation of building a proper relationship with your daughter, you must realize that she is a woman in the making. And thus, you will have to realize that her emotional needs and priorities are going to be infinitely closer to those of your wife than to your own.
Sadly, there are Christian fathers who are hearing that making any distinctions between male and female is sexist. Those who believe that myth will fail their daughters. Creation tells us that daughters have to be different from sons because sons, alone, cannot fully bear the image of God. Only sons and daughters, as they complete each other in relationship, can fully represent who God is. Biblical Christians celebrate the uniqueness of femininity; they don’t apologize for it, and certainly don’t demean it.
So, lets return to Farris’ profound point about raising daughters: At the foundation of building a proper relationship with your daughter, you must realize that she is a woman in the making. And thus, you will have to realize that her emotional needs and priorities are going to be infinitely closer to those of your wife than to your own. The rest of the episode examines two needs that Scripture explicitly says husbands are to meet in their wives; so they are needs a father must meet in his daughter’s heart. This information is not only biblical, but 80% of it comes from interviews I conducted with 5 godly women of various ages.
From God’s command to husbands, Love your wives…nourishing and cherishing her (Eph 5:26-29), we want to consider 4 practical answers to the question:
A. How Does a Father Help His Daughter FEEL UNCONDITIONALLY LOVED?
1. By providing the security she needs. The best way to do this is by loving her mom well. This foundation of her family is the love of her mom and dad for each other. If that footing is shaky she will feel insecure. She needs a dad who loves her mom, unconditionally despite what her mom may look like on the outside. Also, a daughter needs to be shown that her father cares. A lot of times Dads can assume they tell their children “I love you” often enough, or that their daughter automatically knows they do; but hearing it and hearing it often means a lot. Here is a quote from a woman I interviewed,
A daughter needs to know that her father’s love for her will not diminish. She needs to feel secure and safe in that love. A father protects and defends with a passion that expresses love that will not change. His love gives strength and comfort. No matter what life brings you know he will be there. My father was in the Coast Guard, so I grew up with ships being part of our life. My Dad’s love was my anchor.
2. The second way a daughter needs to know she is loved is by you proving she is important by relentlessly devoting your time to her. One daughter writes:
I can never remember a time when my father, as busy as he was, was not there for me. One thing that stands out most in my mind is that he never missed a ball game that I played, be it home or away! I played field hockey in the fall, basketball, in the winter, and softball in the spring. My dad always came to every game, and his voice was the one I heard over the crowd cheering me on, or telling me how to play better. It didn’t matter if it was forty degrees outside and raining; he would be the only parent on the sidelines in a field hockey game. In a gym full of opposing fans three hours from home, I remember hearing my dad encouraging me to block out when going for a rebound.
This may not seem like a great deal to many. But to a young girl on the brink of womanhood, unsure, insecure, and a lot of time confused, it was nice being able to look into the stands and see my dad. Always there, always rooting me on, whether it be praise or correction. His actions were a reaffirmation that he was there not only to watch my games, but also to cheer me on in life. I never felt he was too busy for me, even though he was a very busy man. He made time to take an interest in what was important to his little girl. I knew that if he was interested in what I enjoyed, then he must be interested in me as a person. What a great thing to know that your father is always there, always waiting in the stands to cheer you on.
On a practical note, another woman provides helpful insight: I have observed that sometimes dads have trouble finding something in common with their daughters to bond over. You don’t always need something in common- let her tag along with you when you’re running errands, invite her to throw the football or help you wash the car, teach her to ride her bike, or enter her world by playing tea party with her, taking her on “dates,” helping her with her homework, etc.
3. A third way a dad needs to help his daughter feel unconditionally loved to listen to her heart. To feel loved a daughter needs to know that her dad is listening intently. This seems like common sense, but it is hard to do. One daughter writes, Put away your phone when she is talking to you and make eye contact with her. Show an interest by asking questions, “How do you think you played?” Remind her that she can always come to you and that you always have her back. Try to overcome our masculine tendency to listen in order to fix the problem and, instead, listen to understand her feelings. How did that make you feel. Overcome our male tendency to always teach, and ask for her opinion. What do you think?
4. A daughter needs her father to set firm boundaries and follow through with consequences always reminding her that he loves her but not her actions. Scripture assigns discipline to fathers and “daddy’s little girl” needs painful consequences for disobedience as much as his sons do. However, in my view, Emerson Eggerichs makes a valid point when talking about the differences in the discipline of sons and daughters. One of our interviewees sums up,
I think the advice from the book, Love and Respect In the Family is good. This is a paraphrase. “Be gentle when correcting her, especially in your tone. Girls take personally what is said to them and how it is sad, and can feel rejected and unloved when they are criticized. Girls are more likely to respond to encouraging or soft methods of correction, not in-your-face coaching or yelling. Also, don’t ask them to stop crying or hold in their feelings.”
So, the first need that our daughter has is the need to feel loved. And we’ve summarized four practical ways for dads to meet that need. The second need to meet in a daughter’s heart, in order for her to flourish is verbal affirmation. We take this need of a daughter from what Prov 31 teaches about the need of wives:
Her husband praises her: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.”
B. How Can a Father Help His Daughter BUILD A STRONG SELF-IMAGE
1. Constantly affirm her worth and value. She needs to have her father to, first, pay attention to who she is. He needs to notice her interests, strengths and personality, and motivations. He needs to remind her that she is a unique treasure and precious to him and God. The word, treasure, is the epitome of affirming that she is special, valuable, and unique. Her father needs to help her see and develop the gifts she’s been given and pay attention to who she wants to be. One woman describes why this is such a deeply felt need:
Outside of her home, a daughter is constantly bombarded with messages that she is not skinny enough, not beautiful enough, not smart enough, and just not enough. When she can come home to a refuge where she is told she is enough, that is what she needs to be able to go back out in the world of “not enough” messages again. She also needs to know that her dad messes up from time to time, and it’s okay to mess up, too.
2. Affirm both her outward beauty and inward beauty. The majority of the women interviewed said, “She needs to know that her father thinks she is beautiful” (referring to physical beauty). One woman added, “and help her understand that the desire to be beautiful is the way God made her.” It is true that Peter teaches fathers and daughters to see that beauty in a woman is so much more than outward appearance. It is also the unfading beauty of her character. Over-emphasizing her physical beauty can lead to insecurity, because that will fade with age and it is unwise to weigh our physical appearance too heavily in our view of ourselves. In my counseling experience, the most outwardly beautiful women struggle the most with insecurity.
Nevertheless, it is also possible to over-emphasize the inner beauty of character.
Over-emphasizing a daughter’s character can make her feel that it is done because she lacks outward beauty. Furthermore, Peter’s admonition to focus on the inner beauty of godliness, which a woman has greater control over than her physical appearance, should not be seen to condemn a woman’s God-given desire to be physically beautiful (with modesty). Scripture itself calls many women beautiful, referring not to their inner but outer, physical beauty. Christianity does not teach a dualism that makes the spiritual more important than the physical! The beauty of this physical world matters. In fact, my personal opinion is that part of a woman’s fundamental calling in exercising dominion over the earth is to make the world, (starting with herself and her home) beautiful. If women were not involved in the cultural mandate, I believe we would see mostly male functionality in our culture—not a lot of beauty!
I want to close this episode with two true stories given to me by the women who kindly answered my survey: Here is the first, from the world of teenagers:
I teach middle school students, and I see many girls literally fight tooth and nail because someone said some lie about them or called them a name. So, I was surprised at the wisdom that one of my little 6th graders shared with me as she worked on her project during lunch.“You know, I don’t need to wear those short skirts and I don’t need to fight with girls because of the lies they say. I know who I am.” I asked her to explain, and she went on to say her daddy had raised her to know she was beautiful and valued by Christ. If she was loved by her daddy and God, then why would she need to prove her worth by fighting or prove her beauty through the clothes she wore? What you wouldn’t know from just reading this story is that her daddy was at the time incarcerated. But though he was not physically present, he was still active in her life, even calling in for parent teacher conferences. The values he instilled in her had an obvious impact on her.
The second story shares some words spoken by this daughter as she looked back on her father’s life to try to describe what he meant to her. She writes, At my father’s memorial service I said that even as a grown woman, there was just something about feeling like Daddy’s little girl, knowing that in his eyes I was the prettiest, smartest, funniest, most talented girl in the world. That’s how I felt and that sums it up.
Dad's, we have enormous power to build up our daughter's sense of self-worth!
For Further Prayerful Thought:
1. In Matthew 3:17, as Jesus, God The Son Incarnate, was about to embark on his career, he heard the audible words of God The Father from heaven saying what every child wants to hear from his or her father. What are those words and how do they related to what we’ve examined about a daughter’s needs?
2. What stood out most to you about a daughter’s needs?
