“Confessions of Childhood: 72 Women Reveal the Most Heartbreaking Lessons From Their Fathers’ Mistakes”
Don’t do that dads.
The whole “tell your bfs I’ve got a shot gun” mentality.
That’s the quickest way to teach them to hide bfs from you. A) it’s unnerving and B) it means you don’t trust their choices.
Much better to have a home where the boys are expected to come in and meet you, you get a feeling about them, then have a rational discussion with your daughters later on. Not a raging ‘get rid of him’ kind of chat. Like a chat where you say I didn’t like how he said this to you, does he respect you, etc. She’ll be more likely to listen to logic, and more likely to come to you if she’s worried or unsure about things.
Open dialogue rather than telling her you know better. Odds are, you DO know better. But telling her that shuts her down and she feels like you don’t value her thoughts or opinions. So she won’t open up to you again.
My dad and I recently talked about how he stopped showing physical affection when I hit puberty (20 years ago). He didn’t know how to act because his sisters got treated inappropriately by others when he was young, and he wanted to be sure I never felt like that. It resulted in me never getting hugs or kisses on the cheeks anymore. He also didn’t know how to talk about it in the past. But in the last years, he worked through so much of his rough childhood and really learned to express himself better. He apologized, and I said I understood and that his intentions came from a good place, that the only bad thing was all the hugs we missed out on. We hugged for a really long time after that, and we’ve been hugging extra tight ever since 🙂
So I guess what I wanna say is, don’t treat your daughters differently when their bodies start to change. And always keep talking! I’m so proud of my dad for the person he’s become
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