5 SPOOK-Proof Strategies for Solving the Mystery of Your Daughter

With Halloween being just around the corner, I thought it would be fun to talk today about how you as dads can solve the MYSTERY of your daughter in ways that are less SPOOKY or SCARY.

I often hear fathers tell me their daughters are complicated and complex, sometimes even downright confusing. Yet, believe it or not, I’ve discovered that we girls are not as hard to understand as we may appear. If you, Dad, are open incorporating these insights into your daily rhythms, you’ll see how quickly your daughter will respond to you more positively. Let me say it another way:

The more you understand your daughter’s wiring and core needs, the less of a MYSTERY she’ll be to you.

These five spook-proof strategies for decoding your daughter come from one of my favorite stories in the Bible.

Quick backstory: Mary and Martha are sisters who were close personal friends of Jesus. He was like family to them and loved their brother too. Jesus knew them and they knew him. I love the way Jesus related specifically to Martha, the more dramatic of the two women, during a time when she was overly reactive, totally stressed, and basically freaking out.

If you can relate to experiencing any of these realities with the women in your home or life, you’ll appreciate learning what Jesus did (with his male energy) to enter the fray with his frazzled female friend. I guarantee if you follow His lead, you and your daughter will benefit.

1. He lets her vent to Him while He listens to all of it.

Even when Martha dramatically blurts out that Jesus “doesn’t care” (false assumptions always take place during meltdowns), she continues by crying about having to do everything “by myself.” And if that wasn’t enough, she then barks at Jesus and demands that he tell her sister to help her. Surprisingly, he doesn’t lecture, but listens and absorbs her intensity by being her sounding board.

2. He says her name twice….gently and lovingly.

There’s something calming when any of us hear our name. And for us girls, it’s grounding for us to be spoken to by name. If you speak your daughter’s name with love in your tone and in a gentle way, she will come towards you----maybe not right away, but it is a powerful, healing strategy that works.

3. He sits with her in her emotional reality.

Notice that he doesn’t try and talk her out of what she’s feeling or try to get her to think rationally. No lecture. No criticism. Jesus knows that she couldn’t hear it anyway while being so worked up. So he simply stays with her, looks at her, validates her, and puts words to what she’s feeling, calling it “worry” and “upset.” He tenderly names her emotions. No judgment.

4. He highlights all that is on her life plate.

As girls we are wired to multi-task. That’s why we can talk on the phone, paint our nails, watch a show, and do homework…all at the same time! Yet all of a sudden we reach our max and then comes the explosion. Again, this is where we need gentle grace not power positions. Jesus lets Martha know that he knew she indeed did have “many things” going on, which led to her meltdown. If you validate all that is pressing in on your daughter, your words will go far to make her feel heard and understood (which is empathy---compassionately looking at her life through her eyes).

5. He directs her to focus on one thing.

Jesus tells her that “only one thing is needed.” The implication is that it’s about focusing on Him as the one thing rather than all the needs around her. I’ll take this theme one step further and add that when we girls get overwhelmed with the “too much to do and not enough time” reality, we need gentle, supportive guidance to take it one thing at a time. Breaking it down into bite size pieces is immensely helpful when we’re breaking down.

6 BOLD Ideas to BUILD Your Dad-Daughter BOND

With the new school year underway, this is a perfect time for you as a dad to join in adopting a growth mindset to strengthen and build the bond you have with your daughter. This translates to making a commitment over the next nine months of this school year to grow and learn even more when it comes to “studying” your daughter. 

Here are SIX BOLD strategies that will have A BIG impact on your relationship with your daughter this next year:

1. Regularly check in and ask if you've hurt her heart

I love the story of a father in Southern Oregon who asks his five-year old daughter one question every night as he tucks her in bed, "Has daddy been sharp with you today?" Talk about bold and brave! He’s keeping short accounts with his girl while making sure that he’s not allowing wounds to fester. 

What would it take for you to ask that bold question every day of your daughter? 

Preferably in person, but texting or emailing works as an option. This means you're keeping short accounts with her and not letting hurt or resentment build. This means you’re modeling humility and openness when receiving honest feedback. Your lack of defensiveness will yield powerful dividends both now and into the future as you show your daughter that you don't have to be perfect to be in relationship. 

2. Affirm her once a day

I promise you there’s not a day that goes by where your daughter isn’t hurt by someone, somewhere, somehow. It’s just the way it is with girls. And because we as women thrive when our relationships are in harmony, this means when hurts cumulate, they have a toxic, destructive influence. With your daughter, this will undermine her confidence, calling, gifts, perspective, mood, etc.

So imagine the power that one positive, life-breathing, affirming message from you can have. It can turn her whole day around for the better. It’ll only take about one minute of your time to text her. But why not change it up sometimes and tell her in person one positive trait or character quality or beautiful aspect to who she is. And for extra credit, send her a card in your own handwriting (or if she’s still at home, put it somewhere unexpected where she’ll be surprised when she finds it!) to give her something to read and reread. She’ll treasure it on an especially hard day.

3. Listen twice as much as you talk

This is the whole "God gave us two ears and one mouth" thing as a reminder that it's a good rule of thumb to guide the ratio of talking to listening in our relationships…2:1. 

Do you mostly tell your daughter what you think and expect or do you draw her out to find out why she had the reaction she did, what hurts her heart, how she’s processing complex relational dynamics, questions she has that may not make sense to you, etc.? 

I'll be the first to admit that it's REALLY hard work to actively listen (and I do this for a living!). It's so much easier to formulate my opinion, defense or position rather than REALLY hearing first what the other person has to say…in its entirety. 

As a dad, if you take the time to ask your daughter questions like, "What was the best part of your day and why?" and "What was the worst part of your day and why?," and then listen until you think you can't listen any more, your daughter will trust you with the deepest things in her heart because you set the foundation by listening. 

4. Put your money where your mouth is

To state the obvious, it costs a lot to raise a child these days. It seems like every time you turn around, there’s more expenses that bleed you dry and overextend your resources. Am I right or am I right?!

Yet your daughter is growing up in a day and time where she doesn’t have control over the cost of living, the price of gas, tax increases, school and sports fees, and on it goes. 

Although you feel the stress and burden of providing for your family, if you can find creative ways here or there to purchase something over and above for your daughter, she’ll always remember it in years to come.

Jesus knew what he was talking about when he said there’s a strong correlation between your treasures (money) and your heart (which, in this scenario, is your daughter). 

5. Pray daily for who you want your daughter to become

Even if prayer isn’t your thing, I challenge you to take a 3 x 5 card and start with writing three words on it. Write those things you want to see God do in your daughter that will allow her to be a world changer. For example, you could write, “courageous, uncompromising, and confident.”

Then commit to daily asking her Heavenly Father to lock and load these qualities into the fiber of her being so she becomes all of who He made her to be. 

6. Be willing to admit when you're wrong and ask forgiveness

I realize this might sound harsh, but I don't hear enough stories about dads humbling themselves before their daughter's when they've blown it. 

So, what if you consistently took responsibility and admitted when you’ve had a poor response? Then, ask your daughter how you hurt her so she can express herself honestly, followed up with you asking for her to forgive you. 

If you want your daughter to do the same, it has to start with you. And who better to take the first step and be a role model who shows her what kind of man to look for than you!

So there it is: Your six-step plan of action to strengthen and build your dad-daughter bond. Simply put, think of this as your “#girldad curriculum” this next school year. Go Dad!

How to Bring Healing to Your Daughter's Dad Wound

Hi Dad…

By now you know I have a passion for seeing dads and daughters strengthen their relationship while equipping you as fathers to dial in more intentionally to your daughter’s heart. 

That is why the focus of my blog today is about encouraging you to initiate a potentially challenging conversation with your daughter where you courageously invite her to share about wounds she’s carrying from you. Hard as it may be to hear what she has to say, if you delay, those wounds may lead her to make unwise decisions that lead her off course from being the best version of herself (and I know you don’t want that to happen).

Let me state something that you probably already know. For girls and guys alike there can be dad wounds in our early years that effect current health and functioning many years later. And once those wounds go unattended, just like with physical injuries, eventually they begin to fester until finally the infection impacts other areas of life as well.

Though I don’t want to oversimplify the healing process, I can say that by exposing those areas of pain to truth (a.k.a. God’s truth, your clarifying ‘truth,’ etc.), we can find healing for unfinished business that may be lurking in our present day life. But we’ve got to start by being honest about the wound, the injury, while admitting to what’s actually there.

Your goal must be to affirm your love for your daughter and take responsibility without defending what you did or didn’t do or what you did or didn’t say. Since we’re all human and cause harm, whether intentionally or unintentionally, you’re modeling to your daughter what humility in action looks like. And you give your daughter a gift by staying emotionally present with her while you listen and validate with a focus on trying to understand her. 

I can say that for the majority of females I meet, they are stuck because they don’t know how to talk to their dads, and their dads don’t know how to talk to them, especially about the hard stuff.

Stalemate.

I do understand that not all dads are open to working things through with their daughters, but for those of you who are ready to begin healing the wounds you have caused with your daughter, here’s where you can start. 

Invite your daughter to spend one-on-one time with you while you ask her the following questions. If she lives away, you can always do this via FaceTime or you can send her these questions in writing. Let her know you want to hear whatever she has to say while reminding her you won’t get angry because you want this conversation to result in healing her heart and healing her hurt. 

Here are some ideas for how you can phrase your questions to her:

1. Are we as close as you’d like us to be? If so, I’d love to hear more about what that means to you. If not, why do you think we’re not close?

2. Do you remember any times when I hurt your feelings by what I said
   or did to you? I want to know about them, so you don’t have to carry those wounds anymore or believe lies about yourself that are tucked inside those hurts.

3. Can you recall any times when I missed something or didn’t do something that was important to you, such as not attending an event, failing to see how I’d hurt you by my response, or not seeing how much you were hurting so I was insensitive?

4. I would love your honesty on this next question: What is one way that I’m not being a good dad to you right now?

You will give your daughter a forever gift by opening up this vitally important conversation. And you will give yourself a forever gift by opening up this vitally important conversation. This equates to being a win-win in the end even if it’s a bit challenging through the process. 

Go Dad!

What if Today Were Your Last Day to Invest in Your Daughter?

I’m at the age where attending funerals is becoming more commonplace. And truly, there’s nothing like an end of life celebration to bring everything into perspective. 

I still recall attending a funeral for a dear friend’s husband where there was hardly a dry eye in the place as one of their sons shared stories about what his dad had meant to him. 

While choking back tears, he said, “I think everyone here could say, I want more of my dad.”

His words hung in the air. He ended by saying that he was one of the lucky ones to have had an invested dad. 

As I reflect back on the years of interacting with girls and young women, a consistent theme I hear from them can be summed up in those same six words, “I want more of my dad.” 

Stated otherwise, I’ve never heard one of them say she had “too much” of her dad---too much time, too much attention, too much love, too much affirmation, too much laughter, too much interacting, too much talking, too much connecting, too much validating...you get the point.

This brings to mind the harrowing survival story I heard awhile back of Holocaust survivor, Eva Schloss, who was Anne Frank’s stepsister. She, her brother, and her parents had been taken as prisoners by the Nazis to the Polish death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau during World War II. 

I was deeply moved by one particular story she shared when miraculously reconnected with her father after he had been granted permission to find her in an adjacent camp. Since they were in two different concentration camps, he had no idea that she had just resigned herself to death, was severely depressed, and had been crying much of the time. Yet upon seeing him she said that she felt revived. 

In her own words, Eva describes their reunion:

“His eyes were full of an immense love for me. I threw myself into his arms and felt his warmth and strength flow into me and pull me back to life. I sobbed uncontrollably while he held me close to him as if he would never let me go. He must have felt as happy as I did, to have his little daughter in his arms once more.

He told me to be brave and not to give up…We exchanged looks of such yearning and love that I still see his face like this in my dreams.”

Eva and her mother barely made it out of the war alive. Her brother and father did not.

Yet here she was, at 90 years old, and her dad’s love was still with her---a love that carried her through severe suffering, starvation, torture, assault, resettlement, and later, re-engagement with life. 

I talked with Eva after her presentation and told her about my work with dads of daughters. If I ever meet her again, I will definitely ask her more about her “Pappy” because from everything I could tell, she was still her daddy’s girl.

Dad, I share these stories with you today in the hope that your heart will be stirred. And not just stirred to experience emotion, but stirred to action. After all, it was God who said that it is the hearts of fathers that must turn toward their children, not their heads (Malachi 4:6). 

I want your heart to be stirred to engage your daughter’s heart today as you realize that any day could be your last. And any day could be her last. 

Your intentional investment today will leave a powerful, beautiful legacy for her. And your intentional investment today will leave a lasting, loving legacy in her.

Make this day a day where your daughter enthusiastically and confidently shouts, “I did have enough of my Dad today!”

Optimize Your Fathering Health (With This Checklist)

Let’s be honest. None of us likes it when someone else tells us what to do. 

It’s hard enough when we’re forced to sit for our annual review while hearing our boss give feedback about our strengths and weaknesses. But since it’s protocol, we have no option but to endure the scrutiny.

So here’s my spin on your “annual review” as a #girldad. You have an opportunity to optimize your fathering health by evaluating yourself.

No lectures. No force. No hovering. Just you lifting up the “hood of your car” and checking the wiring in order ensure peak workability. 

I have such great respect for men who are open and willing to be honest, even asking for input to achieve their goals, especially their fathering goals. 

Although many dads I’ve spoken with haven’t written down or articulated their parenting goals, I’ve discovered that those ideals are actually tucked deep within and if defined, provide a road map to pursue the hearts of their daughters (and sons). 

That’s where this self-assessment fathering checklist that I’m providing you today will serve as a proactive tool for your fathering toolbox. It supports your personal growth as a dad because it will help you clarify your vision. 

There’s no need to go down a path of guilt or shame for things you’ve done wrong in the past, and there’s no better time than the present to begin changing the past. You have today and every day from here on out to make up for lost time. 

After you take “The Dialed-In Dad Checklist” and see items that are not a part of your daily or weekly interactions with your daughter, write out two or three specific things that you are going to do starting today that will launch you on your journey toward being increasingly tuned-in to your daughter. 

Here’s Your Game Plan---should you dare to accept it:

1. Challenge yourself to choose two new ways to connect with your daughter this week by using the lower-scoring items on the Dialed-In Dad Checklist. 

2. For extra credit, invite your daughter to fill out this form about you as her dad. I guarantee it will show you where you’re rocking it and where you could use some improvement! 

Click here for the Dialed-in Dad Checklist