On this Father’s Day, I wanted to not only honor my dad but also share insights and quotes from the book “Strong Father’s, Strong Daughters” by Dr. Meg Meeker. Dad’s truly do have a profound impact on the trajectory of their daughter’s lives. In this book, Dr. Meeker shares insights from her practice as a pediatrician on how crucial the relationship is between a father and daughter.
I’m fortunate to have grown up with a dad who was a steady support system and rock for our family. His humility, work ethic and heart for serving others are traits that I deeply admire about him. He truly is my hero and I don’t know where I’d be today without his steadfast love and support throughout my life.
“Friends, family members, teachers, professors, or coaches will influence her to varying degrees, but they won’t knead her character. You will. Because you are her dad.”
(p.5)
“Men, good men: We need you. We – mothers, daughters, and sisters–need your help to raise healthy young women. We need every ounce of masculine courage and wit you own, because fathers, more than anyone else, set the course for a daughter’s life.
Your daughter needs the best of who you are: your strength, your courage, your intelligence, and your fearlessness. She needs your empathy, assertiveness, and self-confidence. She needs you.”
(p.7)
“When she is twenty-five, she will mentally size her boyfriend or husband up against you. When she is thirty-five, the number of children she has will be affected by her life with you. The clothes she wears will reflect something about you. Even when she is seventy-five, how she faces her future will depend on some distant memory of time you spent together. Be it good or painful, the hours and years you spend with her–or don’t spend with her–change who she is.”
(p.26)
She Needs a Hero
“So how do you become a hero to your daughter? First, you should know that she can’t survive without one. She needs a hero to navigate her through a treacherous popular culture. And you should know that being a twenty-first-century hero is tough stuff. It requires emotional fortitude, mental self-control, and physical restraint. It means walking into embarrassing, uncomfortable, or even life-threatening situations in order to rescue your daughter.”
(p.29-30)
Leadership
“When your daughter is born, she recognizes your voice as deeper than her mother’s. As a toddler, she looks up at your enormous frame and realizes that you are big, smart, and tough. In her grade school years, she instinctively turns to you for direction.
Whatever outward impression she gives, her life is centered on discovering what you like in her, and what you want from her. She knows you are smarter than she is. She gives you authority because she needs you to love and adore her. She can’t feel good about herself until she knows you feel good about her. So you need to use your authority carefully and wisely. Your daughter doesn’t want to see you as an equal. She wants you to be her hero, someone who is wiser and steadier and stronger than she is.
The only way you will alienate your daughter in the long term is by losing her respect, failing to lead, or failing to protect her.”
(p.30)
“Authority is not a threat to your relationship with your daughter–it is what will bring you closer to your daughter, and what will make her respect you more.”
(p.31)
“One of the best things fathers can do is raise their daughters’ expectations of life. That will directly affect how your daughter talks, how she dresses, how well she does in school, even what sports or musical instruments she chooses to play. You can help her set goals, help her define a higher purpose for her life, and as a result, her self-esteem will skyrocket. And it will bring you closer, because she’ll recognize you as a leader and an ally, helping her to chart a better course.”
(p.36)
“Dad, it’s not optional: your daughter needs you to be her hero.”
(p.40)
“Making the heroic choice at work, in marriage, and throughout your life will shape your daughter, who she is and what she becomes. You need to lead her wisely, consistently, heroically.”
(p.43)
You Are Her First Love
“Be extremely careful. Many times fathers make innocent comments that are hurtful to daughters. If you comment on her weight, physical appearance, athletic prowess, or academic achievement, she’ll focus on her “external self” and worry about retaining your love through her achievements and appearance. Your daughter wants you to admire her deep, intrinsic qualities. Keep your comments positive, keep them on these qualities, and you can’t lose.
Instead of saying, “I love you because you’re so beautiful,” tell her that you love her because there is no one else in the world like her.”
(p. 52)
“Girls who have been encouraged to be strong athletically, emotionally, intellectually, and physically learn to take over the role of encouraging themselves to succeed. They don’t suddenly go crazy or become weak-willed. The same is true with your daughter’s character. The discipline and standards, the fences and boundaries that you have integrated in her life will become her own.”
(p.74)
“At the beginning of her life, she will feel your love. At the end of her life, you will be on her mind. And what happens in between is up to you. Love her extraordinarily. This is the heart of great fathering.”
(p.76)
Teach Her Humility
“Humility brings with it deep joy and satisfaction because it keeps us from becoming manically self-absorbed.
Don’t let this happen to your daughter. Keep her world larger than herself and her talents. Gently guide her to recognize her strengths and limitations. Let her fail. Let her know that you still love her when she fails. Let her know that she’s valuable not only for what she does, but for who she is. Here is your chance to teach her one of life’s greatest lessons: people are valuable because they’re human, not because of what they do.”
(p.80)
My dad was always willing to spend time with me whenever I had something to show him like in the video above when I was attempting a few gymnastics moves. Obviously, I was in the early stages of learning how to do a back handspring and roundoff, but I didn’t feel bad for failing in front of him. Even though I didn’t pursue gymnastics into my older years, my dad’s unwavering support instilled in me a mindset that made me think I could do anything. Whether I was competing in a spelling bee, track meet or dance recital, I always knew he would be in the crowd cheering me on. 🦸🏼♀️💫
“Talent, intellect, and beauty are wonderful things to have, but they will never make her life more meaningful or give her more significance as a woman. Only humility will.”
(p.81)
“Humility is the foundation of all healthy relationships. Humility keeps each party in a relationship respectful, honest, and relaxed. If your daughter lives with humility, she will discover who she is and what significance her life holds. She will experience joy and contentment in her life. Your daughter was created to live in an intricate web of relationships. Humility keeps her inside that web. Self-centeredness and pride pluck her out of it.”
(p.83)
“The great theologian Oswald Chambers says, “It is not a question of our equipment but of our poverty, not of what we bring with us but what God puts into us.” God has filled your daughter with unimaginable gifts. Humility teaches her that these are in fact “gifts” for which she should be grateful, not proud.”
(p.83)
Humility Keeps Her Balanced
“The problem with making happiness her goal is the lack of guardrails. A goal of happiness can become a justification for self-indulgence. It can encourage selfishness. It can be how children become “spoiled”. And, most important, it can actually lead to unhappiness, as there are no limits to a child’s–or and adult’s–”wants,” and these wants never ultimately satisfy a deeper need. So happiness remains out of reach.
The paradox is that happiness is truly found only when it is routinely denied. In my practice, the happiest girls are always the ones who live with humility. The unhappiest girls are the ones who are most self-indulgent in their pursuit of happiness.”
(p.87)
“Humility teaches us rules and self-restraint, that we’re part of a larger community and need to work together for the good of the whole. Humility teaches responsibility and it reaches us to consider the needs of others. It tells us to look outward rather than focusing obsessively on ourselves, and it reminds us that we aren’t the only ones who count.
The result is that girls with humility experience the real joy and happiness that comes only from strong, healthy relationships with family, friends, and others. We have rules to keep our relationships healthy. And among these rules is denying ourselves so that we can help others.”
(p.87)
Why Your Daughter Needs Pragmatism
“Your daughter’s attitude toward herself comes directly from you. Her expectations, her ambitions, and her assessment of her own capabilities all come from what you believe–what you say and what you do. As a father, you have to ask yourself what sort of woman you want your daughter to become.”
(p.128)
Teach Her Who God Is
“You are not only the first man in your daughter’s life, you are the first authority figure in her life, and your character is invisibly overlaid onto your daughter’s image of God. If you are trustworthy, loving, and kind, your daughter will approach God much more easily. He will not be frightening to her. She can understand that He is good, because she knows what goodness in a man looks like.”
(p.190)
“Girls with good fathers pick good husbands, and girls with good fathers put their trust and faith in God.”
(p.193)
Clarify Your Morals (without apology)
“Give her a set of clear moral guidelines. To do this, you need moral clarity in your mind, and preferably in your life as well.”
(p.208)
“Daughters respect fathers who stand for something. She wants to see conviction and leadership in her father. She might discard your beliefs when she’s older, but at least she’ll know where you stand. Don’t’ throw her into a wasteland of equivocation by saying, “Well, that depends on how you feel, or how you look at things.” Give her something with which to agree or disagree. This teaches her to think, decide, and act. Your own moral clarity will strengthen her to be her own person one day. A lack of moral clarity on your part may result in your daughter going along with the crowd or assuming that her own unexamined thoughts and feelings are automatically right.”
(p.208-209)
“To be a father is to be a leader, to make decisions, to intervene on your daughter’s behalf, and to instruct and form her character so that she knows right from wrong, so that she knows when to say no, and so she’s strong enough to fight temptation. And all that requires you to have moral clarity.
Your daughter needs to know your standards, because everyone else is trying to sell her theirs.”
(p.209)
Realize Who You Are to Her
“When she is a baby, her eyes will search for your face. Her ears will listen for your voice and everything inside her will need to answer only one question, “Daddy, are you here?” If you are there, her body will grow better. Her IQ will start to rise, her development will track where it is supposed to, but more important, she will realize that life is good because you love her. You are her introduction to love; you are love itself.
When she goes to kindergarten she will think about you and she might even talk about you. If another classmate makes a hurtful remark, your daughter will boast to the bully that he’d better be careful because you, her hero, will come over to his house and beat him up. To her, you can do anything, and, most especially, you can protect her.
In elementary school, her challenges and her world expand, but her question for you will be the same: “Daddy, are you still there for me?” When she is thirteen and wearing lipstick ,or fifteen and competing in a spelling contest, or seventeen and living at a friend’s house because she can’t stand you, one question alone will haunt her: “Dad, are you there for me?” She needs to know that the answer is always yes. The more you leave her wondering, the harder she will push for an answer–and she might go to extremes to try to force it from you.
And when she has her first child, or is diagnosed with breast cancer at thirty, or her husband walks out on her and her kids, the question will remain, “Dad, please, Dad, are you there?”If she knows you are there, dependable and full of love for her, you will have taught her this great lesson: Life is good. Good men help make it so.”
(p.232-233)
“Your daughter looks to you for guidance, whether the issue is what instrument or sport to play, what college to attend, or what to do about sex, drinking, and drugs. If she feels close to you, she’s much more likely to make good decisions. If she doesn’t feel close to you, all bets are off.”
(p.236)
“One day, when she is grown, something between the two of you will shift. If you have done your job well, she will choose another good man to love her, fight for her, and be intimately connected to her. But he will never replace you in her heart, because you were there first. And that’s the ultimate reward for being a good dad.”❤️
(p.237)
xoxo,
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Hi there! I’m Maria and the creator of this blog. I’m a Fitness Instructor, Multimedia Producer, and Travel Photographer focused on helping women get in shape physically through fun and effective workouts and spiritually through faith-based reflections. Let’s get Fit4Paradise together!