I was surfing the telly when I came across Super Nanny and stopped. After all we can all do with some tips on child rearing from time to time. They were dealing with this couple that had 4 kids. 1 girl and 3 boys. The father was patient and loving and super over protective of the boys but when it came to his 13 year old daughter he was impatient, angry and down right hostile. I felt sad and confused for her and as I got further into it I could not see a reason for him to be acting this way.
She was the typical teen with the usual lack of interest in chores and homework etc and as usual they tell a few lies as we all do to cover. Yes, she stopped calling him dad and now called him Joe and was sometimes rude to him but it certainly looked like a defense mechanism. What her father got from this was that she was she was mean, lazy, untrustworthy and in his own words "a pathological liar" and therefore not worthy of his time so he cut her off. He stopped speaking to her. No hellos when he came home from work. No how was your day. The only words he had for her was laced with whips, digs and hard dry sarcasm.
I watched on in horror wondering if perhaps the child was not his but she was and Super Nanny was on him trying to get him to make that change but he fought her at every turn with excuse after excuse about needing time to make a change. His biggest resistance unfolding with his 13 year old daughter standing right in front of him, guard down asking him to acknowledge her and love her like the rest of her siblings. His response was to mock her. It would have been like receiving a kick to the gut. (I wept)
I don't know if men understand that they are the FIRST man in their daughters life and that he is the example and her reference point when it comes to choosing a partner later on. He is the blue print so the way he treats her AND her mother is what is in her mental library.
I cringed watching this thing unfold before my eyes because I knew that her choices later on were going to be bad and it would probably be a long road to her choosing a man that would treat her right if HE her father chose not to correct his behavior. So many times we look around us wondering "Why does she allow herself to be treated this way." This is why.
You cant bully or shout your child into what or who you want them to be. Instead listen. You might get a better picture of who they are now and a peak into who they are going to be.
