Why it’s important for Papa Duck to know each young’un in the flock individually.
I’m an old grizzled veteran. I’ve purchased more than one training bra, even when there was nothing to train. I’ve made the runs to Walgreens for more than a few Light Days, Every Days, Windy Days, and Almost There Days. I’ve looked out my front window and seen one of my daughters standing at the side of a car, kissing a boy—a boy I didn’t even know. That certainly caused me some deep thought. I’ve heard my daughters scream at each other, “You’re not wearing my sweater or my skirt. You wore my shirt last week, and it came back dirty!”
I’ve gone through the battles. One of the most important things I’ve learned is how important it is to get to know each girl individually.
The Leman Ducklings
At our summer home in New York, families of ducks waddle up onto our lawn in groups—sometimes nine, other times four, five, or six, and sometimes only Papa Duck, Mama Duck, and one duckling. Yet when our lawn is swarmed by hordes of ducks, which all look alike to me, those mama and papa ducks know their ducklings from the others. Papa Duck proudly leads his flock across the yard to the pond, with Mama Duck at the tail end, herding the most slow moving of their ducklings along so nobody gets left behind.
Sande and I have five ducklings—four of them female. Though all are Lemans through and through, none is like the other. The trick for me as a dad is to discover each of their individual quirks and to keep them in mind as I relate to them.
Here’s what I mean.
Holly
Holly, our firstborn, was the lab rat of the family. Sande and I admit it. We practiced on her. In fact, we overdid everything with her. After all, Sande had miscarried twice before she got pregnant with Holly, which meant she was even more special and long awaited than many first babies. We tiptoed around Holly and tried to keep the house quiet when she was sleeping, because she was a real piece of work. If we had to go somewhere, and that meant waking Holly up, Sande’s and my conversation went something like this:
“Honey, we’ve got to go. You wake Holly up.”
Holly woke up swinging.
“No, I’m not waking her up. I woke her up yesterday. It’s your turn.”
“But . . .”
You see, Holly woke up swinging. She had this blankie with a knot in it that looked like someone had taken a machete to it. It was always tucked under her arm like a football. But when you had to wake her up, she woke up hard—and you’d better duck.
I learned as a dad that you don’t talk to Holly in the morning; you simply wait until she comes around and is fully awake. Yet that same daughter today is a principal and an English teacher by trade; has great patience; is married to Dean, a wonderful man; and has all of my wife’s graces. But you don’t talk to her in the morning, since she has her mother’s raccoonlike qualities.
Holly could read at two years old. Really, she could. When my older brother visited us when Holly was two and a half, he saw her “reading” and said to me, “She’s not reading. She’s memorized that book.”
Holly overheard, looked up at her Uncle Jack, and spelled, “E-X-I-T, Uncle Jack.” Yes, indeed, she had a great command of the English language, and she didn’t hesitate to use it for her purposes.
Case in point, at the age of four, Holly told me she had decided to drop out of preschool, which with new management had changed from a warm, fuzzy experience into an experimental learning center.
“Well,” I said, “if you’re not going to preschool anymore, you have to call them and tell them.”
“But I don’t have their number,” my firstborn said.
I decided to call her bluff. “Here’s the number.”
Holly one-upped me. She actually dialed it and told the person who answered, “This is Schlolly Leman” (she couldn’t pronounce Holly) “and I’m not coming to school there anymore.”
She never went back.
Some years later, I did an autograph party at a bookstore. Holly wanted to go with me. She asked me on the way over if she could get a book. “Sure,” I said. I’d never turn down any of my kids who want to read a book.
We left the store, though, without getting her a book. I realized it an hour later and apologized to Holly.
“Don’t worry, Dad,” she said. “I read it.”
She’d read the entire book while we were at the store.
When we went for our first appointment with Holly’s kindergarten teacher, the teacher reported that Holly was doing well and adjusting to kindergarten, and that she knew everything she had to know and then some. The teacher said Holly had an affinity for words and was very discerning. One day, the teacher was trying to explain to the kids how rain was made. So he took some ice cubes and held them until the warmth of his hands made them drip. “This is rain,” he said.
“Mr. Wortman,” Holly said, “that’s not rain. That’s ice cube water.”
Ah, yes.
Holly is the same child who would ask, “What time are we going to leave, Dad?”
“About ten o’clock,” I’d say.
“Dad, what time specifically are we going to leave?” she’d ask.
“We’ll leave at 10:10,” I’d say.
“Thanks, Dad,” she’d say.
She had a need to know details. She would study a problem from all angles.
That’s a firstborn for you.
Firstborns are groomed for success, for leadership, and for recognition. They’ll not only get a job done; they’ll get it done right. Because it’s usually a few years before siblings arrive, firstborns dominate the scene at home for a while. Their role models are adults—their parents.
Because we parents react to every cry right away, make a big deal about what the firstborn does, and plan every detail of our baby’s day, is it any wonder that later in life your firstborn daughter will expect immediate attention, react like everything is a big deal, and have an intense need to know exactly what you’re doing for the day?
Firstborns are groomed for success, for leadership, and for recognition. They’ll not only get a job done; they’ll get it done right.
Firstborns are the planners, organizers, list makers, managers, and perfectionists of the world. School is often their proving ground. They tend to be confident and self-assured in most situations. They keep things under control, set goals and reach them, and tend to get more done in a day than children who fall elsewhere in the birth order. They’re great problem solvers.
But the very things that make them successes can also cause problems in their relationships. Others may see them as self-centered and difficult to work with (firstborns know how things should work and expect everybody else to agree). They’re sometimes afraid to try new things because they’re not sure they’ll succeed, and they’re critical of themselves and others. They’re never satisfied with the job they’ve done. “I could have done that better,” they tell themselves. They live by the rules and aren’t naturally flexible—order is very important to them. They also put themselves and others under a lot of stress and pressure and tend to be serious, failing to see the humor in situations.
Does this put some things about your firstborn in perspective, Dad? Do you see now why it’s so important for you to lighten up on that already heavily burdened firstborn?
Krissy
Contrast that with Krissy, our second born, who was happy to come along for the ride. She didn’t need to know the specifics of anything. She’d jump in with both feet and ask questions later.
When Krissy was seven, and we were in California, she broke her arm. While at the hospital, the physician did what physicians are prone to do when difficult things need to be done with children. They said it was time for the parents to leave. In many cases, that’s good judgment, because parents can sometimes prove to be more difficult than the wounded child. However, with Krissy, it wasn’t the best judgment.
Mama Bear Sande, knowing her little cub, said, “Doctor, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
But he insisted . . . and got a surprise that he probably hadn’t seen before, in all his years of being a physician.
You see, if Krissy finds herself in a corner, she adopts badgerlike qualities—the vicious type with the steel gloves. When Krissy realized she was going to get a shot and her mother wouldn’t be there, she went absolutely ballistic. So much so that, indeed, Sande was ushered back in the room to be there when Krissy got the shot.
If Krissy finds herself in a corner, she adopts badgerlike qualities.
Though Krissy is normally sweet and easygoing—she’s a kindergarten teacher now—you never, ever back her into a corner. You always have to give her an out. I learned that the hard way more than once.
For example, Krissy applied to only one college: North Park University in Chicago. It shouldn’t have surprised me that a middle-born would place all her eggs in one basket, but it still made me nervous. Especially when North Park had had the good sense to kick me out as a student (though years later, they actually gave me the distinguished alumnus award).
I knew the campus well, but I still looked at it differently on move-in day when I realized the school would now house my daughter. We did all the regular things you do when you take a kid to college—meet the staff, haul suitcases and boxes to the dorm room, and meet the roommate.
At night there was an orientation dinner, where students and their parents met the president of the university. As Sande, Krissy, and I inched our way toward the front of the long line, we were seven places away from shaking the president’s hand when Krissy turned to me and said, “I need to talk to you.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Now? The president is right there. We’ve been waiting in line—”
Her chin firmed in determination. “I need to talk to you right now.”
I backed down. My badgerlike daughter was in full swing. “All right, come over here.”
We stepped out of line, but Sande held our place. Any hope that this would be a short conversation was immediately dispelled when I saw the tears well in Krissy’s eyes.
“I don’t want to go to school here,” she said.
It took a second to form any words. Then I managed to sputter, “What?”
Keep in mind, this was the only school Krissy had applied to, and it was late August. She had no other options. Even so, she insisted, “I don’t want to go to school here.”
“Krissy,” I said, “get back in line.”
“Daddy, I’m scared. I don’t feel safe here. Please don’t make me stay. I want to go home with you and Mom.”
Earlier in the day, some yahoo driving a truck had scared Krissy half to death when he raced through an alley at about forty miles per hour, barely missing her as she dodged the vehicle.
Few words get a father’s attention more than “I don’t feel safe here.” But I knew this wasn’t the time to make a snap decision.
“Listen,” I said, “we’re going to shake the president’s hand. See your mother? She’s almost at the front. And then we’re going to sit down and enjoy this chicken dinner together as a family. We’ll talk more after that.”
Few words get a father’s attention more than “I don’t feel safe here.”
Crestfallen, Krissy slipped back in line. Needless to say, it was a very long dinner. Krissy didn’t eat a thing. She didn’t even try to make an effort to talk to the kids who were seated across from her.
We got through the dinner, went back to her dorm, and immediately noticed that when Sande and I had been attending parent functions, thinking Krissy was unpacking, daughter number two hadn’t unpacked a single item. Not even a sock.
Sande and I looked at each other. This was going to be tougher than we thought.
I did one of the toughest things I’ve ever done as a father: I left her there anyway.
“Honey,” I told her, “I know you’re unhappy and upset with us and you want to come home, but I’m not going to take you out of here. This is a new situation, and you’ve never been one to love new situations. I believe in you, and my guess is this college is going to work out, but here’s my guarantee: if you still feel the same way in two weeks, I will personally fly out and bring you home.”
Krissy had to leave for one last brief student meeting. While she was gone, I quickly wrote her a note that she could read after I left. I told her how proud I was of her, how confident I was that she was going to be okay. Later, she told me that when she read that letter, she “cried her eyes out.” She needed me to be firm, but she also needed me to be tender. The letter accomplished both.
Over the next fourteen days, we received several calls and letters from Krissy. Two weeks to the day after we dropped her off, I phoned her.
“Well, Krissy,” I said, “your two weeks are up.”
There was a pause, then a confused, “What two weeks?”
“Krissy,” I said, incredulous, “the two weeks. Do you want me to fly out there and bring you home?”
“Dad,” Krissy answered, sounding every bit like the teenager she was, “get real.” She went on to tell me how wonderful school was. Her freshman class had gone to downtown Chicago (the Loop), she was meeting new friends, enjoying her classes . . .
For once, the psychologist and his lovely bride played it right. We had based our decision on knowing Krissy’s personal makeup, her individual bent. We didn’t treat Krissy like we treated Holly, nor did we treat her like I would have handled Kevin II. We treated Krissy like Krissy.
Middle-borns tend to march to the beat of a different drummer. As the firstborn goes, the middle-born goes the opposite way. They’re the hardest of all birth orders to pin down because children are always influenced most by what is directly above them. The middle-born looks up and sees not adults as the firstborn does, but the firstborn.
Middle-borns tend to march to the beat of a different drummer.
How can a middle-born compete with a star performer like the firstborn? She can’t. So she’s smart enough to decide to take an entirely opposite direction. That’s why your middle-born and firstborn daughters will differ like day and night in interests and personality.
To make things worse, when the baby of the family is born, the middle-born not only is looking at that star firstborn and knowing she can’t compete but also is feeling that she can’t compete with the “cuteness” of the baby of the family. No wonder middle-borns will tend to go outside their families for friendships and are less likely to confide in family members. They’re relational masters, great at mediating and negotiating, since they’re always stuck in the middle at home. They also tend to be more secretive, independent, diplomatic, and compromising in social situations.
Middle-borns realize that life isn’t fair, because they’ve experienced it at home, being caught between siblings. They tend to be realistic, unspoiled risk takers who strike out on their own and know how to get along with others. They’re peacemakers who are great at seeing issues from both sides.
Again, the very qualities that make them great at what they do can become negatives. Middle-borns may be suspicious or cynical because they’ve been ignored by their families. They may feel inferior because they’re neglected. They may also rebel because they feel they don’t fit in. Family members may see them as stubborn, bullheaded, or unwilling to cooperate. Since they want peace at any price, others can take advantage of them. Wanting not to offend their friends can cloud good judgment and decisions. They also may take a long time to admit they need help since it isn’t easy to share feelings with family members.
Does this sound like your middle-born daughter? Since a middle-born so often gets the end of the stick—squeezed between the crown princess and little schnooky—work hard to affirm her and draw her out. If you want to give your middle-born a treat she won’t forget, spend time with just her. Even better, do it on a regular basis she can count on. Don’t include any other siblings, no matter how much they beg. And make sure you take plenty of pictures, since middle-borns have a lot fewer pictures in their photo albums than the firstborns and babies of the family they compete with. Take a peek at your family albums, and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
Hannah
I’ve watched all my girls go in different directions. Let’s face it: some you worry about a little more than the others. Hannah is our fourth-born child and was the baby of the family for more than five years before Lauren was born, starting, in essence, a new family.
Rewind to when Hannah was ten years old and I dropped her off at school one morning. I kissed her good-bye and watched her gather up her things into her backpack and put her backpack on. Then off she headed in the general direction of school. She was twenty steps away when her flute came flying out of her backpack and landed on the school lawn. I thought she’d hear it fall, look back, and pick it up. But she continued. Another few feet, and a book fell out. Then another book. So now three personal items of hers were on the turf.
I stretched my hand toward her and then looked skyward. I pleaded with God, Please keep your eye on Hannah.
Today Hannah is the most easygoing, patient, and even-tempered of our kids. She also has many of the graces her mother has. She’s a marketing manager for a nonprofit that works mainly in Africa, and she does a great job with walking the line between the American and African cultures with friendly ease.
This week, as Hannah and I were talking, she said to me, “Dad, do you remember the night you woke me up at midnight for basketball?”
I couldn’t help but smile. “I sure do.”
The Leman family members are big sports fans—especially of the University of Arizona. Back in 1997 the Wildcats won the national basketball championship for the very first time. A huge celebration was scheduled in McKale Center, for eight or nine o’clock in the evening, as I recall. I was going to take Hannah with me to the celebration. She was so excited.
Then the news reported that the plane was going to be delayed. The players wouldn’t arrive until after midnight. Hannah was ten years old at that time.
When Mama Bear heard the time got changed, she said, “Hannah, honey, you can’t go. That’s too late, and you have school the next day.”
Hannah went to bed that night very upset and crying.
“But, Dad,” she told me this week, “I remember you woke me up at midnight. You scratched my back and whispered, ‘Hannah, get dressed. We’re going to go to McKale Center.’ ” She laughed. “That was one of the most fun things we ever did.”
There were fifteen thousand people at the event, with an additional overflow crowd. The sports fans were absolutely giddy and went ballistic, as only sports fans can. But Hannah told me the next day was even better than the event itself; she was a tad bit sleepy but said it was worth it. All the kids at school were talking about the reception and bemoaning the fact that they didn’t get to go because it was so late. Then Hannah said, “My daddy woke me up, and we went, just the two of us.” The kids dropped their jaws.
“That meant so much to me, Dad,” she said. “It made me feel so special. I was the coolest kid in school that day.”
Hannah is one of my four daughters. I once asked all the kids to enter their names in my new cell phone. One of the kids entered the name Favorite daughter. That kid was Hannah. As a dad, you want all your kids to feel like they’re your favorite.
And they are—all in their own unique ways.
Everybody applauds for a firstborn star in nearly every area of life, and a middle-born has a whole group of loyal friends, but the baby of the family has her work cut out for her. She has to figure out how to get attention, so she’s likely to be the most social of your kids. She’s charming, people-oriented, affectionate, engaging, and tenacious—that’s because she’s learned early in life how to push her parents’ and siblings’ buttons to get what she wants. She’s uncomplicated and not hard to figure out, unlike the middle-born. She tends to be the one in the family who has one or more pet names, versus the older kids, who are most likely called by their given names.
Last-borns are likable, fun to be around, easy to talk to, caring, and lovable, and they want to help.
People love last-borns. After all, they are likable, fun to be around, easy to talk to, caring, and lovable, and they want to help. They don’t have any hidden agendas, and they’re often entertaining and funny. They know how to get noticed. And they don’t take no for an answer; they keep going until they get what they want. Again, they spent a lot of time manipulating their older siblings to do things for them, so they’ve got that sort of negotiation down pat.
Last-borns are very good at working a daddy over into giving them what they want by batting eyelashes or letting a single tear slip. I’ve seen rock-hard negotiators, known in the business world for forcing grown men into humble compliance, melt before a teary-eyed three-year-old daughter.
Their downside? Babies of the family can come across as fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants, or even a little flaky, impatient, spoiled, or temperamental. They’re used to others pitching in and helping out with their workload (after all, those older siblings can do things more easily and faster because they already have a track record of doing them), so they can be lazy. They’re also very trusting. Others can easily take advantage of them since they make decisions based on their feelings.
Does this sound like your baby-of-the-family daughter? Sure, she’s charming, and she steals your heart. But if you let her manipulate you, she’ll be drawn toward someone like you—somebody she can manipulate and control. So, do your future son-in-law a favor. Teach her responsibility and hold her accountable for her actions. If you do, your warm, cheerful daughter will gain the organization, compassion, and understanding she needs to make a significant impact in her adult world.
Lauren
The last child in our family, Lauren is essentially a firstborn in temperament since she spent more than five years in our home by herself. Yet, because she’s the youngest in our family of five kids, she also has some entertaining, baby-of-the-family qualities.
Remember how Holly awoke in the mornings? Contrast that with Lauren, our youngest, who actually slept in her crib in our walk-in closet the summers we spent in New York. Sometimes we’d be downstairs when she woke up, and we’d hear her singing happily to herself. When we went upstairs to get her, she always had a huge smile for us.
When Lauren was in kindergarten, we got a call from school—the kind parents never want to get. “I’m sorry to inform you that we can’t find your daughter.”
A while later they called back to say they’d found her.
During recess, the kindergarteners had played freeze tag. It’s the game where, if somebody touches you, you have to stay until somebody unfreezes you. The little girl Lauren normally played with—her partner in crime—was home sick that day. So when the whistle blew, her partner wasn’t there to notice that Lauren was still standing on the corner of the playground frozen stiff. She wouldn’t move. After all, the rules were that you had to be touched before you could move. That’s a firstborn/only born—playing by the rules.
Today Lauren is in college. She won an $80,000 scholarship to attend. A self-starter, she launched two businesses on etsy.com: LByours and MiniatureLiterature. She makes the coolest jewelry. People old and young love it. She’s profoundly creative, inventive, meticulous, and detailed. She’s not a kid you have to hound or give a lot of direction to. She has great judgment, knowing right from wrong big-time. She’s compassionate toward other people, an ideal young woman.
Only-born children have the positive and negative traits of firstborns times ten. They’re super-achievers, perfectionists, and conscientious to the max. By the time they’re eight or nine, they’re pint-sized adults. They relate more to adults than to kids their own age, and they’re ahead of everyone in the game of life. They don’t need anyone to organize them, make plans for them, or take care of things for them.
Only-born children have the positive and negative traits of firstborns times ten.
But those very traits that make them highly successful in their careers can also be damaging in their relationships. Their accuracy, detail, and perfectionism can work against them unless only children learn how to manage their own expectations.
Does this sound like your only-born? If so, do her three favors: Lighten up on her (especially if you tend to have that critical eye). Teach her compassion toward others and to recognize that what others think and feel is important. Find something to laugh with her about every day. If you do even those three simple things, you’ll give your only-born the kind of wings that will allow her to soar for a lifetime.
Pop Quiz Time
How well do you know your school-age daughter and her world?
1. Who is your daughter’s homeroom teacher?
2. What’s her toughest subject?
3. What did she wear yesterday? (Be more specific than “clothing.”)
4. What’s her favorite musician or music group?
5. Who is her best friend? Her latest crush?
6. What does her bedroom smell like?
7. What is her absolute favorite food?
8. What is her pediatrician’s or doctor’s name?
Does Your Duckling Follow You?
Let’s go back to Papa and Mama Duck and their ducklings from earlier in this chapter. An Austrian zoologist, Konrad Lorenz, did a fascinating study on imprinting. He divided a grouping of eggs laid by a goose. One group he left with Mama Goose; the other group was hatched in an incubator. The babies hatched by Mama followed her around, but the group hatched by the incubator followed Lorenz. Why? Researcher Eckhard H. Hess says that, “When ducklings are hatched, the first moving object they see is usually their mother. They proceed to follow her. If they see another moving object, however, they follow it instead.”1
Just as there is a critical imprinting period in a duckling’s life, the early experience of a human being is also critical. Researchers came up with three theories:
1. “Early habits are very persistent and may prevent the formation of new ones.”
2. “Early perceptions deeply affect all future learning.”
3. “Early social contacts determine adult social behavior.”2
According to AnimalBehaviour.net, imprinting in ducklings occurs twenty-four to forty-eight hours after hatching. “In a variety of experiments, young chicks and ducklings were imprinted on humans, wooden blocks and classically even old gum boots. They bonded with a single item and would follow it wherever it went . . . [and would] go on to form a life-long association.”3 Even more intriguing, imprinting is irreversible.
Although the period of imprinting in human beings isn’t as sharply defined as the imprinting period in birds, researchers believe it may lie somewhere within the first six months of life.4
Do you see, Dad, why it’s so critical that you spend time with your children while they are young? Why you need to step up to the plate to help your wife with that newly out-of-the-womb baby and infant? Why you need to be available to that toddler, that elementary-age daughter, that middle schooler? If you want to make a difference in your daughter’s life, you must spend time “imprinting” on her—your values, your priorities, your perspective. The longer you wait, the more difficult it becomes to imprint on your child. Your duckling will follow someone. Don’t you want that someone to be you?
The time your daughter spends growing up in your home is a critical period in which the family connection needs to happen. Your daughter needs to feel love, security, and acceptance . . . from you.
You only get one shot at fatherhood, so make it your best shot.
Take it from a father of four daughters—those little girls grow up awfully quick. If your daughter is still at the stage where she comes bounding to your arms, hugs your neck, and slathers you with kisses in welcome, enjoy those times!
You only get one shot at fatherhood, so make it your best shot. Give it all the gusto you can. Your girl deserves an involved dad.
How to Know Your Daughter
Dad, how well do you know your daughter? Have you noted her quirks? Her personality? What she’s afraid of? What makes her laugh? What she’s interested in?
You’re a guy, and men use a lot fewer words than women. We also are masters of CliffsNotes. We want the highlights, not the blow-by-blow whole story.
Sande and I were in the car one day when Hannah phoned us.
I picked up. “Hey, honey, what’s new?”
“My roommate, Becca, got engaged!” she said with enthusiasm.
“Cool. She’s engaged. That’s nice,” I responded.
Sande grabbed the phone and went off the chart with excitement. “Ohh,” she squealed, “do you like the ring? Is it yellow gold, white gold, or platinum?” With nary a pause, the questions started flowing rapid-fire: “Do her parents like him? Have they set a date for the wedding? Is it going to be a big wedding? Are you in it? Has she thought about the dress yet? . . .”
She rattled off at least fifteen things I would never have thought to ask.
If I were going to ask my daughter about the wedding, what would I ask her? It would take me an hour even to compose the questions. Even then, the questions I could come up with would be very different. They’d be things like:
“Hey, she’s not even old enough to be married. How old is she anyway?”
“She’s twenty-two, Dad,” Hannah would say with her mother’s imperious tone.
That’s still not old enough, I’d be thinking. And then I’d think, Does her father have a gun? And other assorted things such as, I hope there aren’t going to be swans at the wedding and I hope this isn’t giving you any ideas.
To me, this conversation was so over-the-top that I didn’t even know how to relate to my wife or daughter. But contrast that to my wife, who was deliriously, genuinely thrilled that Becca was engaged.
Dad, let me point out the obvious: your girl is not a boy.
No wonder so many men shrink and say nothing at wedding time. They know they have absolutely nothing to offer.
Dad, let me point out the obvious: your girl is not a boy. She thinks differently than you do. She talks differently than you do. She responds emotionally differently than you do.
That won’t make your relationship always easy to maneuver, but it’ll certainly never be boring.
Your duckling needs you to realize that not only does she need words from you, she needs sentences and full paragraphs. She also needs you to listen patiently to far more details about her life and her friends’ lives than you might innately feel comfortable with. You need to step confidently into areas where many men might fear to tread. But you must do it, for the love of your duckling.
Mike, a thirty-one-year-old dad, approached me with a unique problem. “Uh, Dr. Leman,” he said hesitatingly, “you told us in the seminar that we should enter our daughters’ worlds. My daughter is seven, and she eats, sleeps, and breathes ballet. So how exactly am I supposed to enter her world?”
I laughed. “Well, you wouldn’t look good in a pink tutu. But you can go to all her performances, watch her twirl in the living room, and even research costumes and other ballet shows with her online.”
Mike shot me a note a month later to tell me he’d taken his daughter to a special performance of Swan Lake with a Russian theater company in a nearby city. Even better, one of his coworkers, also a dad, brought his daughter.
Now that’s a dad who loves his daughter enough to risk asking another guy to go to what some less secure men would call a “poufy” event. Way to go, Mike. Your daughter will never forget what you did for her. She’ll be telling the story when she’s eighty to her grandkids, who’ll be listening with wide eyes.
Matt is the father of two girls—Stephanie, who is almost two, and Kendra, who is four. He came from a home where his mother raised him and his brother; his father was largely absent. But Matt decided early on in his parenting that he wanted life to be different for his daughters. When he noticed recently that Stephanie loved to stack things, he took her to the store, and together they picked out a bright set of wood building blocks. That’s their most fun daddy-daughter activity . . . seeing what they can build together. “My two girls are as different as day and night,” Matt says. “Kendra loves to draw. I can only do stick figures.” But every evening you’ll find the two of them, bellies on the kitchen floor, with a long, white sheet of paper and either crayons or pencils. Matt proudly posts some of their drawings on the wall in his office.
Then there’s Luther, whose daughter is a piano prodigy at age fifteen. “I can only play the radio,” he says. Yet he’s worked hard to arrange his work schedule so he can be at nearly all of her concerts and recitals. This past week he even took her to a huge music warehouse that was having a sale. “It was like entering a completely foreign world to me,” he admits, “but my daughter absolutely loved it. I walked away with only a few bucks out of my pocket and a beaming daughter who couldn’t wait to tell her mother all about our exciting outing.”
Stefan is a single dad whose wife died four years ago. Their two daughters are now eleven and twelve and are interested in makeup. He hasn’t a clue which end of the lipstick tube to use. So he garnered the help of Melanie, a close female friend of his wife’s, who has acted like an aunt to the girls all their lives. He gave her seventy-five bucks, told her to take the girls to pick out some makeup, and then told the girls he’d have a surprise awaiting them at home when they returned. The gleeful girls returned with their makeup items to a transformed kitchen. He had moved his big dresser mirror to the table, propped it against the wall with a sign—“Makeup Party”—attached to it, and added some streamers and a roll of paper towels to clean up the mess. He had even ordered a pizza and breadsticks and cut them in small pieces for “fancy hors d’oeuvres” and served Strawberry-Banana V8 juice in their mother’s fanciest crystal goblets. I can guarantee you those girls won’t ever forget what their dad did for them.
And for Stefan and the girls, there was another bonus. His creativity and love for his girls so touched Melanie’s heart that her steadily growing admiration for him turned into love. In three months she and Stefan will be married. The girls, who will both be bridesmaids, couldn’t be more excited about Melanie joining their family because they know their mom loved her too.
So, Dad, what is your daughter interested in? How might you enter her world this week? There’s nothing more manly than being the dad your daughters need you to be . . . even if you do feel like you have to go to the gym and lift weights or go on a nice, long, hot, sweaty run afterward to get your testosterone moving again.
The time to start is now. Don’t wait. As my friend Anne Ortlund said, “Children are like wet cement.” However, as they get older, that cement starts to harden, and change comes at a slower pace. Your daughter may be two, four, ten, fifteen, nineteen, or twenty-six. Whatever age and stage she is, you’re still in the driver’s seat to steer the daddy-daughter connection. It starts with individual love and forming a relationship.
Top Four Do’s for Dads
1. Listen to her.
2. Take your cues from her.
3. Don’t assume anything . . . ever.
4. Be gentle.
The Power of Individual Love
When you get to know your daughter as an individual, it will become second nature for you to act in a way that works best with her birth-order traits and her personality. For an example, I’ll take you back to our second daughter, Krissy, and her transition-to-college experience.
Because I knew Krissy well, I realized it wouldn’t be fair to abandon her at North Park, even though she had begun to settle in after those first couple of rough weeks. I knew it would only be a matter of time before she started feeling homesick. So, since I travel a lot for business, I decided to make it a regular practice to arrange for long layovers in Chicago. The airlines will allow you to stay at an airport for up to four hours before you catch the next plane without charging you for that airport being a separate destination.
The first time I did this, I wanted it to be special, so I arrived at the school without giving Krissy advance notice. (Now, if that would have been Holly, our firstborn, I would have had to inform her down to the minute when I’d be arriving. See what I mean about treating your daughters differently?) I had to go to Old Main to find out where Krissy would be, and I made sure to give myself enough time to get there before she did. I learned she was scheduled to be in a cell biology class, which met in an auditorium.
Ten minutes later, she was walking toward class when she saw her old man hanging out front. Her jaw dropped open, her face lit up, and the love that illuminated her face made me so glad I had taken the time to show up.
“How’d you know where I’d be?” she cried out.
“I went to Old Main and asked them.”
“That is so cool,” she said, incredulous.
She felt special. For those two and a half hours, she knew she was in the center of her father’s heart. We had a great time eating lunch, talking, and catching up on each other’s lives. Sure, we’d had letters and phone calls in between, but there’s nothing like being able to look each other directly in the eyes.
For those two and a half hours, she knew she was in the center of her father’s heart.
This continued throughout Krissy’s stay in college. During Krissy’s sophomore year, Sande and I went to Mexico. I spoke to the Young Presidents’ Organizations at their YPO University. We knew from Krissy’s letters that she was facing another down time, so on the return trip home I convinced the airline to give us a ticket that would take us from Mexico City to Arizona via the convenient route of Chicago! You have to have a bevy of frequent flyer miles to get that favor, but once it was done, we eagerly anticipated the surprise.
Knowing how young women hate to be embarrassed, especially by their parents, Sande and I showed up at Krissy’s dorm wearing sombreros and Mexican blankets. Of course, as a baby of the family myself, it was my idea; Sande, my classy firstborn wife, agreed to play along not only because she loves me but because she’s been worn down to my crazy ideas over the years.
We fit into the Chicago, academic yuppie scene about as well as a ham dinner at a synagogue. Wanting to really spring the surprise, we simply passed on the following message: Tell Krissy Leman she has a package waiting for her downstairs.
When Krissy came down to get her package, there were the two amigos!
You may have one daughter; you may have five daughters. But the important thing is to study each daughter’s character and apply a distinct style of parenting that fits her personality.
Don’t fall for “even-steven parenting,” which treats all kids alike, no matter their specific needs. Instead, try to make each child feel special. Those methods have paid big dividends in our relationships with our daughters.
Study each daughter’s character and apply a distinct style of parenting that fits her personality.
Sande and I received tremendous affirmation on the day Krissy was married. Krissy told her big sis, Holly—her maid of honor—in a letter that she was a little nervous about getting married first. She also acknowledged Holly’s role as the firstborn with affection, rather than competition. Here’s some of what she said to her sister:
You’ve always gone first. And I never have liked going first. That’s probably why God gave me such a special sister like you. It can’t be easy being at the top, knowing your four siblings are all looking up to you. I want you to know how very special you are to me and how I treasure all the memories. I love you with all of my heart. Thank you for standing next to me as I marry Den. It means so much to me that you’re there. Thanks for being so special. I pray we will always remain close in heart, even though we’ll be living in different states. I love you! Kris.
As a father, holding this letter in my hand was one of those rare moments where I realized that Krissy’s wet cement had hardened, and the result is that two once-warring siblings have grown to love and appreciate each other in adulthood. Their relationship will stand the test of time, even when Sande and I are long gone.
Few things in life have been as rewarding as getting to know each of my daughters’ quirks, fears, dreams, and hopes, and then parenting around those. When you do that, Dad, you make your daughter feel special. Like the notorious bandit El Guapo tells his men in what I consider the greatest of all movies, The Three Amigos, “I know each of you like I know my own smell.”
Sande says I have a nose like a beagle. That has come in handy in dealing with my daughters and distinguishing between them. But like every other dad, when my second child was born, I had at first assumed that she would be a clone of the first one. Was I ever wrong! My two girls were night-and-day different from day one.
When you know your daughter like you know your own smell, loving her as an individual will be a natural response, as simple as breathing. You’ll also make decisions that are right for her, and you’ll be on your way to building a relationship for a lifetime.
A Good Dad’s Quick Reference Guide
• Know and love your daughter as an individual.
• Make her feel special.