it takes a good man to help a daughter be a girl

This last weekend I discovered an interesting thing about my daughter and myself.  As a father I work hard to treat my kids with a lot a love and fairness.  But I learned this weekend that I need to treat them a bit differently than I have been.  Not that I favor one over the other, but that as they start to become stronger in their own identities, I need to be more sensitive about what each of them needs.

This last Saturday we celebrated my daughters birthday and had quite a bit of fun.  One of her presents was a lunch box which looked a lot like a purse, and Sunday she carried it around as if it were a purse.  Part of the weekend included some daddy/daughter time, and not really having been able to think of anything else, I took her to the mall for some window shopping.  The first thing I did was take her to the Nordstrom’s makeup counter and had them do a “makeover” with a little eye shadow and some lip gloss.  I took her over to the mirror afterwards and oh my did she light up!  It was delightful!  And that’s when it hit me – she needs to feel like she’s a pretty little girl.  We did some more window shopping and she got to try on some bracelets and necklaces, and I got her a little one that said “Daddy’s Girl”.  We also got her some nail polish and did her nails that night.

Now, you might be wondering why this isn’t something that her mom should be doing.  Well, her mother is not the girly-girl type and generally makes fashion decisions based on what is more practical than pretty.  I know that there is a girly side in there, but she doesn’t nurture it very much. This was a byproduct of the way that she was brought up by her mother, and it seems that she is falling somewhat into the same pattern.

But before you think that I’m going to be all girly and do lots of girly things with my daughter, what I also realized is that the stronger and more authentically masculine I am as a man, the more she responds in a feminine way, allowing her to relax into her feminine nature.  David Deida’s “The Way of the Superior Man” is a fantastic treatise on the dynamics of masculine and feminine polarity, and this truly fits in that dynamic.

Another part of being aware of this is that by me being a “real” man, my daughter will come to expect that is the way she deserves to be treated, and set the example for my son and how he needs to treat women.  I know growing up that I really didn’t have much of a clue  of how to really treat women  due to the way that I was brought up.

Just one more way I’m breaking the bad patterns of my upbringing.