Park Cities Presbyterian Church (PCA)

Dads and Daughters date night

By Tim Tinsley

Published November 1, 2009 in Witness

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honor your father and mother" (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:1–4

Fathers can impart godly courage, wisdom, and hope to their daughters, or they can push them toward despair and rebellion.

We dads really do want to connect with our daughters in meaningful ways, but sometimes we just don’t know how to get into deep heart discussions. Some dads lurk in the shadows of their teenaged daughters’ lives, emerging only to bark out criticisms or make sarcastic comments. As the winds of our culture blow hard against our daughters, they need the firm ground that a meaningful relationship with their daddies offers.

Over the decades of counseling struggling marriages, I have found that girls who have poor relationships with their fathers tend to enter into marriage on unstable ground. They are insecure and wonder if anyone will really treasure them, and they often settle for less, even for abusive relationships. Many legitimate arguments and frustrations these wives have with their husbands are actually shadowboxing matches with their dads as they pound away at unresolved issues they brought into the marriage. On the other hand, girls who have meaningful relationships with their father tend to choose solid husbands and have deep authentic companionships with them.

Every dad (and every parent) must ponder, “What do I want my daughter to know and believe before she leaves home?” A few weeks ago, we set out to help—by

1. explaining our culture as it relates to the feminine mind,
2. forecasting what waits in the road ahead, and
3. teaching biblical principles that the dads and daughters can discuss “real time” over a sandwich.

We meet at Texadelphia, a neutral turf where everyone feels welcome. (The owner, Tom Landis, closes down his restaurant each Wednesday evening for us and even gave us all free food on the first night!) The restaurant is packed with folks from all over Dallas—believers from a myriad of different churches and guys who don’t attend church but want to be better dads for their daughters and need some help in breaking the ice. So we tee up key heart issues each week, provide questions to be discussed, then turn the men loose to eat dinner and dialogue with their date. The girls are so thrilled to be there with their dads receiving his special interest in them.

Getting into the nitty gritty

We have made these four promises to the fathers and daughters:

• You will have an opportunity to converse as father and daughter about heart issues.
• You will have an understanding of the feminine mind. (This is a running joke with men throughout the ages, but we are offering straightforward information about the heart of a woman and her deepest longings.)
• You will have a compelling vision for your father-daughter relationship and for womanhood in the twenty-first century. The landscape of American femininity is shifting, but you can have a meaningful relationship as father and daughter as well as develop your own compelling vision for how you want to spend your life.
• You will have some fun. The responsibility of being responsible can choke the fun out of life. We won't take your mind off of your responsibilities, but we'll also see the joys on the journey of life.

So what do we talk about? Here are some of our topics so far:

• The benefits of a meaningful relationship with one's father
• The dangers of not having a meaningful relationship
• Why one-third more females graduate from college than males
• The implications for dads and daughters in a society morphing into a matriarchal structure
• Girls who are not loved well by earthly fathers overcoming the difficulties of understanding the love of their heavenly Father.

Check out our blog, where you can view videos of these talks.

In the winter we'll invite dads and teenaged sons to a similar series, setting the stage for meaningful conversations about being men.