The reason I really appreciated this post was that me and my wife ARE expecting a daughter later this year.
I already know she is going to be spoiled and it will be VERY hard to see her grow up etc.
What this post did was to make ME print it and put it away and promise myself I will read it 3 times a year.
Hopefully I will know when to apply the DOTING FATHER button and when to ease off.
thanks to whoever posted it.
This is the father who doesn't want "Daddy's little girl" to ever grow up. He spoils her with material goods, he is overly protective, he hovers over her and makes sure she has everything she wants.
The one thing he dares not give his daughter is the gift of self-reliance, because he cannot bear to be separated from her. To lose his little girl's adoration, even temporarily, feels to him like losing a part of himself. In many ways this doting father is as dependent on his daughter's love as she is on his.
The daughters of these fathers pay a huge price for the special favor of their doting fathers. Sometimes it's the disintegration of the mother-daughter relationship. Sometimes it's the unraveling of their relationships with one or more of their siblings. Sometimes it's the loss of their own separate identity.
It all starts well enough, when she is a little girl. This is when it is good for her to experience this kind of fatherly adoration from Daddy - when she is young and dependent and trusting, and her identity is first taking shape. Daddy's unconditional love gives a daughter confidence and courage and a special kind of head start in life, She needs unqualified love from both of her parents in order to survive and to feel safe and secure.
But very soon, she will need parents who can give her the freedom to fail or to feel sorrow or to taste frustration, to fully feel her own pain and pleasure and learn from them. In this way, she can have ownership of her experiences and feelings. A doting father has trouble doing this - he doesn't want to let go of his daughter, because he wants to be indispensable to her forever. And so he bails his daughter out of every conceivable scrape or unpleasant consequence of her decisions. And he satisfies her every whim for material things.
Adored daughters have trouble seeing their father's doting behavior as harmful because it feels like the ultimate disloyalty. And to see Daddy as a life-size, real person, instead of a gentle, romanticized giant, is to jeopardize the wonderful feeling that he can make right anything that goes wrong.
Idealizing Daddy is fine when you are five - but it's crippling when you are 25 or 35. Because if, as an adult, you still believe in Daddy's miracles, you may not believe that you can make your own dreams come true. You may not believe you can even formulate your dreams without his guidance.
I wholeheartedly agree with this post.
One thing I would add is that there isn't anything wrong with a little healthy adoration. I'm 35 and adore my Daddy and I still believe he performs miracles. *wink*
Yep, I'm still a Daddy's girl.
xoxo
Brooke
More boring 'insights' about father-daughter relationships. The torture continues.
*
The reason I really appreciated this post was that me and my wife ARE expecting a daughter later this year.
I already know she is going to be spoiled and it will be VERY hard to see her grow up etc.
What this post did was to make ME print it and put it away and promise myself I will read it 3 times a year.
Hopefully I will know when to apply the DOTING FATHER button and when to ease off.
thanks to whoever posted it.
Dude, just make sure there is no "TER" graphics on the printed version AND plan in advance what you're going to say when the old lady finds it wherever you hide it.
Otherwise you'll be reading Truth Seekers posts on "Dad's that don't live with Mom anymore and it's impact on Daughters"
BK
But before you print it, cut out the title and the "Posted by..." stuff, so it's just a bunch of text that you could have gotten from anywhere.
Be sure to also cut out anything that refers to providers or anything else that could possibly have come from a TER type of place.
If your SO finds it, you can just say that you cut and pasted it out of some "parenting web site" that you came across on the internet, but you can't remember the URL for the site, because you were just surfing the internet at the time.
Technology is way cool!
there was a powerful courtier who had a secret affair with the queen, who bore a son, believed by everyone to be the king's. The son grew up and became the king, but he knew who his real father was. When rumor surfaced questioning the royal lineage of the king, the only way to dispel the rumor was for him to order the execution of the powerful courtier. He agonized over the decision, but the courtier (his true father) insisted that is must be done ... His father died with a smile knowning his son has strength and that his lineage has usurped the kingdom.
mine didn't spoil me rotten and I became a very independent, reliable, self-sufficient woman -- thank goodness for discipline and love at the same time.
Hugs,
Ciara