I have been off for a while… And I’m really sorry about that.
As I mentioned in my last post, one of the most important factors in order to build a strong Father Daughter Relationship, is to spend time with our daughters.
Spending time with our daughters can be sometimes very hard… Especially because most fathers feel it’s their responsibility to support their family. This leaves very little time to bond with our daughters.
The good news is that since nowadays most women also work and we (the fathers) can spend more time at home and enjoy our daughters.
I spent Last weekend with a good friend from Norway. And we were talking about how much we both love spending time with our kids. Then I told him that I find it really hard to be with my kids because of my work schedule. And since my wife doesn’t work I find myself spending less and less time with my daughters and there’s nothing I can do about it.
To what he replied with an expression of amazement…
Later in the conversation I learned that in Norway, in order to get the full payment for the maternity leave (which is almost a full year of salary for the mother), the father has to take 3 months off of work and spend this time with the new member of the family.
This is amazing!
Think off it.
First the Norwegian government pays the mother’s salary for almost a year. Not only that they also ‘force’ the father to be an active part of the family… And the paid time the father is spending with the new baby is the same amount of time a mother can take off as an unpaid maternity leave in the USA!
So, I did some research in the wikipedia. It turns our that this is only one example of a country that give incentives to parents to spend time with their children.
I don’t want to get into the politics between socialist and capitalists countries. But I think there’s a very important lesson to be learned here.
Some times the things that are worth a lot, seem to be free but, in reality someone needs to pay for them.
The time we invest with our daughters is priceless, if you live in a country that pays for it… Good for you!
But, if you live somewhere else, you better get your wallet out… Because it’s worth it!

Dr. Linda Nielsen, is a psychologist and professor of adolescent psychology and women’s studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. She has been studying father daughter relationships for many years. She has published a book and many articles on this subject. But more importantly she has been working very hard to help create better father daughter relationships, she even teaches a course on this topic in university.

In a very interesting study she conducted with the students that took this course. She asked her female students to answer a questionnaire. The goal was to find out what kind of relationships they have with their fathers and how do these relationships differ from their relationships with their mothers?

What she found out is that, although the majority felt they had a loving relationship with their fathers, the vast majority felt that the mother-daughter relationship was more emotionally intimate, and more comfortable.

She point out that the reason for this difference is that daughters don’t spend as much time alone with their fathers as they do with their mothers. And probably because of this they tend to avoid talking personal things with their fathers.

Dr. Nielsen is a big advocate for shared parenting, this means that fathers and mothers should have equal opportunities to create and build a relationship with their children. This means that both Father and Mother should spend time alone with their kids. This holds true for married and divorced couples.

Since the goal of this website is to create the best father daughter relationship, we as fathers should make our best effort to spend time alone with our daughters.

1. Talk about you: We all have better relationships with the people that we know well. So if you want to have a good relationship with your daughters we can start by telling her about your life, especially about the time you were her age. This will make it easier to relate to you. If you feel comfortable, talk to her about you relation with your parents.
2. Go out on dates: When we have fun with people we tend to like them more, so take your daughter on a date once in a while. But remember no chaperone.

Remember we need to do our best to spend time ALONE with our daughters. This way they will feel secure telling us about their interests and problems during all her life.

One of the most difficult things when it comes to our father daughter relationships is that fact that as men we never don’t always know what women want.

What make this a lot harder is that we think that because we know our daughter since she was a baby we actually do know what she wants… The truth is that we only know what’s best for her, but as far as what she wants we will never know for sure. (She’s a woman, as complex and intriguing as any other woman).

This is true, no matter how young she is… A two years old and a twelve years old are both women and they are both wired the same way. They will like to talk, and when they talk they are not always trying to communicate a message… In fact more often than not they talk because that’s how they connect.

Your daughter will talk to you because she wants to create a bond with you. You in return are supposed to listen.

Since I know this is something that’s really hard for me, I decided I’ll devote a post to this topic. I know this will come handy not only in regards to our daughters… I know my wife likes it a lot when I put this advice in action…

When women talk they are trying to connect so, we are suppose to listen. Just listen and internalize the message. Don’t react to what you hear, don’t offer a solution to every problem she tells you (unless she explicitly asks for a solution).

To do this I have some practical things that we can do:

1. Stop doing anything else: This is harder than what it sounds… Many times we are in the middle of a TV show, or a videogame… She doesn’t understand that and she sure doesn’t care. So just drop it, turn the TV off.
2. Look at her:  Try to keep eye contact; I know that you can multitask… She can multitask too, but right now she want 100% of you attention.
3. Don’t interrupt: In fact you shouldn’t talk at all, just nod… unless you want to ask her something to understand better what she just said.
4. Don’t offer a solution: Chances are that even if you devout your complete attention, to what she just said, you didn’t understand what she really wanted. So don’t offer a solution… Better give her a hug or a smile or both.

The important thing here is to know that when our daughter or wife (or any other women for that matter) talks with us she want it to be a one way conversation… The amazing thing is that this really holds true at all ages.

I remember when my daughter was a 2 years old; she could talk to me for hours… I enjoyed the cute voice she had, so I could just listen to her (I didn’t understand a word of what she said) and in any way this build our relationship stronger.

Father daughter relationships with a teenage sound complicated.

No matter how much we want our relationship with our daughter to stay the same as when she’s a kid. This won’t happen so in order to keep our superman image in the eyes of our daughter we need to change our approach. But first we need to know what we are up against now.

Until now, in our daughter’s eyes we were the fountain of truth… Every time our daughter asked we had an answer. And no matter how far fetch the answer was she believed us.

By the time, our daughter is 10 or 11 years old, she will start to see things from different points of view—hers included. She will begin questioning our point of view. This is great! This means that our daughter is becoming an independent person… Unfortunately this also means she will start to revel.

The good news is that her original thinking and her new opinions are going to be strongly based on what she knows until now… And that’s what we have been teaching them and the values we have raised her on.

So, what am I supposed to do now? This is the million dollar question. And to be honest I don’t really have an answer… That being said there are things we need to focus on.

Dr. Linda Nielsen a professor of Educational & Adolescent Psychology in Wake Forest University has a very interesting study she conducted on her students during 15 years. In this study she points 2 very important points that, we as fathers, should improve.

1)      Communication with our daughter

2)      Spending more time with our daughters.

In future posts I will talk about these 2 topics more in depth.

In life there’s a rule that seems to be almost absolute:

The more effort you put into something the better results you’re going to get.

And in my experience this rules as proven itself every time.

This is especially true, when it comes to my relationships with my daughters. The more time and effort I invest creating a relationship with my daughters the stronger and healthier the relationship grows.

That’s why I think that the #1 advice I would give to any father (not only for a daughter) is to start building the relationship with your children as soon as possible.

In order to achieve this, the first thing you need to do is, you have to understand that even tough your baby girl can’t hold  her head up, she’s a human being, she’s a person and she has her likes and dislikes… Just as you do.

This is easier said than done. It’s really hard to feel you are creating a relationship with a new born baby. More often than not you find you are feeling alone even if your baby is with you, because a new born baby doesn’t interact much. She usually needs one of 3 things

1. Eating
2. Changing
3. Sleeping

The important thing in this stage is to know that she’s not only growing physically, but also mentally and the younger a person is, the more a person learns and is susceptible to be affected (unfortunately this is true also for a negative habit). What we want is to show our daughter she is the most important thing in our life and that we love her and care for her. This way she will know that we love her… That’s just the way it is.

And by doing this effort not only our daughter will grow loving us we will be closer to our girl too.

I have several tips on how to get closer to a baby girl… in fact these tips are good for both, boys and girls.

• Bath: Bathing a baby might be a little scary, but once you get use to it you both are going to enjoy this so much… Besides this is a time you can spend with your daughter while she’s wide awake.
• Help at nights: At nights when your daughter is breast fed, sometimes you find yourself awake and useless… Why don’t you help your wife, doing the shipping and handling,  this will help you feel closer to your daughter and will make your wife feel you support her… So if you can do this you will see only good things out of this.
• Funny faces: Babies tend to focus more on faces, than anything else, so by doing funny faces you will keep her attention…
• Talk: she won’t judge you, you don’t have to talk about your feelings, you can explain her everything, she we’ll appreciate this.

The Father Daughter Relationship is different than any other relationship.

When it comes to human relations in general, we usually go through life creating different relationships with the people we meet. The thing is that usually most of these relations are short term. But as we know, family relations aren’t this way, family relations are lifelong.

We have the same parents, siblings, sons and daughters, throughout our life.

Another difference that our family relations have with most of our other relationships, is that most of our other relations are based on a need we have to fill; this need can be a friendship or an employment, but in any case there’s a big part of self interest in these relationships.

In my experience, the only relationship whose goal is to fulfill the void in another person (and not in our selves) is the relation between a Parent and a child. This is the reason why our relationships with our daughters are probably one of the hardest relationships we’ll have in our lives… This is also the reason these relationships are the most meaningful and fulfilling we’ll have in our lives.

What I’m saying is that this is not going to be an easy task, but the reward is as big as the effort we invest (if not bigger).

In a healthy Father Daughter relationship the daughter is the one that gets the biggest benefits from it…

Having a healthy and positive atmosphere in the family is probably the best influence any parent can give is children. The role of a father in the family is fundamental. The problem, in the case of Fathers and Daughters is that this relationship is neglected, many times because of the awkwardness of having a relationship that may seem inappropriate. This happens out of respect and care obviously.

But the truth is that many researches point out that daughter that had a secure and strong relationship with their fathers. Tend to feel better about themselves, are more assertive and are more confident in their relationships with other men in their lives.

Any loving father, wants to give to his daughters the very best in life, we can start by giving them a secure and loving father-daughter relationship… And this will benefit our daughters and will reward us with intense fulfillment.

As a father of 2 girls, the most important thing for me is my father-daughter relationships.

In life we have different relationships, some we like and enjoy and some don’t, some we choose and some we don’t. Some of our relationships are more profound and meaningful than others. The relationships we have with the members of our family are the most important relationships we have and these relations are ‘forced’ upon us.

I know, we choose our spouse and in many cases we actually choose to become fathers. But, even if we choose to have a baby, we can’t decide who is going to be our baby. Not even the gender of our baby (And I know many of us want to have a baby boy). In my case I have been blessed with two daughters that I wouldn’t change for anything.

Even tough, I love my daughters more than anything in the world; I sometimes find it hard to relate to them. This difficulty is based on the fact that they are girls… And I don’t know what they are expecting from me.

Although there’s no academy where you can learn how to be a father, people have been parenting since the beginning of time… I know some do it better than others.

That’s why I started this website… Because we are fathers, and the only thing left for us, after we become parents, is to create the best relationship we can with our children.

I want to learn how to have a good father daughter relationship. And in the way I want to help you learn too.

In this site I’m going to take the notes that will make me the best father I can be.

Some of the material of this website is going to be original and a lot of the material will be ideas from people that are smarter and more prepared than me.

I hope we both can create the best father daughter relationship possible.