How to Protect Your Daughter from Insecurity
You determine how she will see herself.
A girl craves male attention and validation. She seeks it out. She desires it most from her father, and a good father will provide that attention and validation.
If she has a weak or absent father, her confidence will be destroyed, and her view of the world will be warped.
Let’s walk through a common scenario that plays out day after day, time and again, in homes across the world and how it leads to broken, insecure women.
Let’s say a young girl has been pushed away and treated as an annoyance all of her young life. She craves male attention but does not receive it. Maybe her father ignores her in favor of the TV.
Or maybe he never puts down his phone.
Or maybe he is more comfortable with his sons and doesn’t care about relating to his daughter.
If she has older brothers, they may also treat her as an annoyance.
At this point, a girl will do one of two things:
Act out in negative ways to get negative attention from her father. Negative male attention is better than no male attention.
Close herself off. Become timid.
Both will lead to disaster.
What happens when this girl, who has tried but failed to get male attention and validation, suddenly starts developing into a woman? Suddenly, she has all the male attention she could ask for. From 0 to 100 in almost no time at all.
And she knows exactly why.
So what has she learned? The only way to get male attention and validation is with her body.
The ultimate expression of this, of course, is sex. A girl starving for male attention learns that sex is the surest way to get it. So that’s what she starts to use.
Women with this warped sense of self are easy to manipulate. They are easy to exploit.
When the initial high of male attention wears off, they will be left broken. The evidence of this is everywhere.
How do you prevent this in your own daughter? Shower her with love and attention.
Hug her
Kiss her
Read to her
Play with her with whatever toy she finds fascinating at the moment
Listen with full eye contact
Tell her she’s pretty
As she gets older, believe it or not, the advice doesn’t change much. She might start withdrawing from physical affection in her teenage years, especially if she is having issues with her appearance.
Don’t let her.
Hug her. Kiss her. Give her full attention.
Some signs that you are doing things right: she sits down next to you and puts her head on your shoulder, without any prompting. She starts tickle fights with you. She always wants to show you something she has drawn or made. She’s not acting out in destructive ways to get your attention.
A big sign (HUGE red flag) that you have some work to do: She tries to crawl in the lap of other older men.
Girls are not like boys. Your sons need to be forged into weapons. Your daughters need to be cultivated and tended, like flowers in a garden. This is the responsibility of the father.
Older brothers can sometimes be suitable surrogates, but nothing can replace a loving, attentive father. With proper gardening and care, your daughter will be able to ignore the wrong kind of male attention and attract the proper kind of male attention.
This will serve her for the rest of her life.
Spot-on.