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Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know (Paperback)
by Meg Md Meeker
| Category:
Parenting, Family life, Relationship |
| Market price: ¥ 158.00
MSL price:
¥ 138.00
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Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
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MSL Pointer Review:
This is an excellent book that will help fathers of girls. Its advice is at once conventional, common sense and yet goes against the mainstream of our toxic culture.
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Author: Meg Md Meeker
Publisher: Ballantine Books; Reprint edition
Pub. in: August, 2007
ISBN: 0345499395
Pages: 288
Measurements: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01301
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0345499394
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- MSL Picks -
This book really hits the nail on the head as far as the challenges our daughters face today. It speaks closely to the fact that most of what our culture deems appropriate for our daughters is simply wrong and that every day we fight a battle for our children's physical and mental well being.
This book is absolutely critical to any father raising a young girl and the sooner you start practicing these concept the better!
A great follow-up for this book would be a periodically released primer on current media sources detailing the dangers of them. Part of the challenge I face, especially after reading this, is that so many parents are simply not savvy enough to recognize the influences that might be damaging to their parents. For example, when discussing the inappropriateness of myspace for 12 year olds, many parents did not know what it was and had never investigated or checked into their daughters online activities (most of whom had myspace pages at age 12). I am a young parent and work in the web industry, so I know what is there and know what to look for. Most parents, especially working professionals do not have the time to keep up with current online trends.
This book has inspired me to start a group at my church where fathers and daughters regularly participate in activities and fathers are able to share experiences and knowledge about their daughters activities.
Dr. Meeker has lead the charge on reforming our culture and media and it is our job to follow her lead and pick up this fight. So, GO BUY THE BOOK!
(From quoting Nicolas, USA)
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Meg Meeker has spent the past twenty years practicing pediatric and adolescent medicine and counseling teens and parents. Dr. Meeker is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a fellow of the National Advisory Board of The Medical Institute. Dr. Meeker is a popular speaker on teen issues and is frequently heard on nationally syndicated radio and television programs. She lives and works in Traverse City, Michigan, where she shares a medical practice with her husband, Walter. They have four children.
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From Publisher
In today’s increasingly complicated world, it’s often difficult for parents to connect with their daughters–and especially so for fathers. In this unique and invaluable guide, Dr. Meg Meeker, a pediatrician with more than twenty years’ experience counseling girls, reveals that a young woman’s relationship with her father is far more important than we’ve ever realized. To become a strong, confident woman, a daughter needs her father’s attention, protection, courage, and wisdom. Dr. Meeker shares the ten secrets every father needs to know in order to strengthen or rebuild bonds with his daughter and shape her life–and his own–for the better. Inside you’ll discover:
- the essential virtues of strong fathers–and how to develop them
- the cues daughters take from their dads on everything from self-respect to drugs, alcohol, and sex
- the truth about ground rules (girls do want them, despite their protests)
- the importance of becoming a hero to your daughter
- the biggest mistake a dad can make–and the ramifications
- the fact that girls actually depend on their dads’ guidance into adulthood
- steps fathers can follow to help daughters avoid disastrous decisions and mistakes
- ways in which a father’s faith–or lack thereof–will influence his daughter
- essential communication strategies for different stages of a girl’s life
- true stories of “prodigal daughters”–and how their fathers helped to bring them back
Dads, you are far more powerful than you think–and if you follow Dr. Meeker’s advice, the rewards will be unmatched.
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Chapter One
You Are the Most Important Man in Her Life
Men, good men: We need you. We-mothers, daughters, and sisters-need your help to raise healthy young women. We need every ounce of masculine courage and wit you own, because fathers, more than anyone else, set the course for a daughter’s life. Your daughter needs the best of who you are: your strength, your courage, your intelligence, and your fearlessness. She needs your empathy, assertiveness, and self-confidence. She needs you.
Our daughters need the support that only fathers can provide-and if you are willing to guide your daughter, to stand between her and a toxic culture, to take her to a healthier place, your rewards will be unmatched. You will experience the love and adoration that can come only from a daughter. You will feel a pride, satisfaction, and joy that you can know nowhere else.
After more than twenty years of listening to daughters-and doling out antibiotics, antidepressants, and stimulants to girls who have gone without a father’s love-I know just how important fathers are. I have listened hour after hour to young girls describe how they vomit in junior high bathrooms to keep their weight down. I have listened to fourteen-year-old girls tell me they have to provide fellatio-which disgusts them-in order to keep their boyfriends. I’ve watched girls drop off varsity tennis teams, flunk out of school, and carve initials or tattoo cult figures onto their bodies-all to see if their dads will notice.
And I have watched daughters talk to fathers. When you come in the room, they change. Everything about them changes: their eyes, their mouths, their gestures, their body language. Daughters are never lukewarm in the presence of their fathers. They might take their mothers for granted, but not you. They light up-or they cry. They watch you intensely. They hang on your words. They hope for your attention, and they wait for it in frustration-or in despair. They need a gesture of approval, a nod of encouragement, or even simple eye contact to let them know you care and are willing to help.
When she’s in your company, your daughter tries harder to excel. When you teach her, she learns more rapidly. When you guide her, she gains confidence. If you fully understood just how profoundly you can influence your daughter’s life, you would be terrified, overwhelmed, or both. Boyfriends, brothers, even husbands can’t shape her character the way you do. You will influence her entire life because she gives you an authority she gives no other man.
Many fathers (particularly of teen girls) assume they have little influence over their daughters-certainly less influence than their daughters’ peers or pop culture-and think their daughters need to figure out life on their own. But your daughter faces a world markedly different from the one you did growing up: it’s less friendly, morally unmoored, and even outright dangerous. After age six, “little girl” clothes are hard to find. Many outfits are cut to make her look like a seductive thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl trying to attract older boys. She will enter puberty earlier than girls did a generation or two ago (and boys will be watching as she grows breasts even as young as age nine). She will see sexual innuendo or scenes of overt sexual behavior in magazines or on television before she is ten years old, whether you approve or not. She will learn about HIV and AIDS in elementary school and will also probably learn why and how it is transmitted.
When my son was in the fourth grade at a small parochial school, the teacher gave his class a science assignment. Each student was to write a report on any one of the infectious diseases from a list she gave them. My son chose to write about HIV and AIDS. (This was a popular choice because it is so widely talked about.) He learned about the virus and about drug injections and medications used to battle it. After I picked him up at school, we stopped by the grocery store. As I pulled into the parking lot, he was telling me about his findings. Then he said, “Mom, I just don’t get it. I know HIV is really dangerous and that people who get AIDS die. And I get, you know, how men and women give it to each other, but what’s this stuff about men giving it to other men? I just don’t see how that can happen.”
I took a deep breath. Now, I am not a squeamish person. I am a doctor. I’m used to talking to patients about sex-related health risks. And I believe strongly in treating all patients the same, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual. But here’s what grieved me: I know from child psychology that it was too soon to detail specific sexual acts (beyond simple intercourse) to my son. It was one thing to teach him how children are conceived. It was quite another to talk about sexual acts that he cannot understand and should not be confronted with at his age. I felt as though his right to innocence had been invaded. I never withhold information, because knowledge is important, but timing is crucial. Shocking young children breaks their healthy sense of modesty. That modesty serves a protective function. There, in the grocery store parking lot, I spoke as gently as I could, but my son was rightly upset. This knowledge and the mental pictures it drew for him taught him something he didn’t want to know, and was not and could not be prepared to know at his age. In today’s world, we adults do a terrible job of letting kids be kids. Our children are forced prematurely into an adult world that even our own parents or grandparents might have considered pornographic.
When your daughter hits fifth or sixth grade, she will learn what oral sex is. Before too long, she will have a pretty decent chance of seeing someone engaged in it, as the new trend in sexual behavior among adolescents is public display. She will feel comfortable saying the word condom and will know what they look like because she has either seen them on television or at school. Many well-meaning teachers will pride themselves on speaking openly and honestly to her about sex, determined to break the taboo about adults talking to kids about sexual activity. The problem is, many health (sex) educators are woefully behind in the information they use—and this isn’t their fault. Their materials are often outdated. And many celebrities don’t help. Sharon Stone, for instance, recently remarked to the teens of our nation that they should participate in oral sex rather than intercourse because, I guess, she believes it to be safer. Does she understand that any sexually transmitted disease (STD) a kid can get from intercourse, she/he can get from oral sex? I doubt it. Sure, she probably felt that she was on the cutting edge of the new era of sex education, but the problem is, her assumptions are outdated and she hasn’t taken the time to learn the scientific facts. She doesn’t see what we doctors see. Yet she and celebrities like her reach millions of teens with their various messages of “safe sex,” which unfortunately aren’t safe.
Teachers in most schools are no better informed. They know that a high proportion of kids are sexually active, and that many parents don’t know what their kids are up to. But the teachers rely on government-mandated curricula, and government bureaucracies move slower than our knowledge about medicine. Moreover, the government’s standards are not based entirely on science but on principles that many parents might not share.
Sex education curricula generally follow the guidelines of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. SIECUS is a nonprofit advocacy group that proposes to “assist children in understanding a positive view of sexuality, provide them with information and skills about taking care of their sexual health, and help them acquire skills to make decisions now and in the future.” Let’s review just a few of the guidelines written in the manual so that you can make your own decision about what your daughter is learning at school.
For children ages five to eight (kindergarten through second grade):
Touching and rubbing one’s own genitals to feel good is called masturbation.
Some men and women are homosexual, which means that they will be attracted to and fall in love with someone of the same sex. (This is in the manual for the older children.)
For children ages nine to twelve (third through sixth grade):
Masturbation is often the first way a person experiences sexual pleasure.
Being sexual with another person usually involves more than sexual intercourse.
Abortion is legal in the United States up to a certain point in pregnancy.
Homosexual love relationships can be as fulfilling as heterosexual relationships. (This is in the manual for the older children.)
For children ages twelve to fifteen (seventh through tenth grade):
Masturbation, either alone or with a partner, is one way people can enjoy and express their sexuality without risking pregnancy or STDs/HIV.
Being sexual with another person usually involves different sexual behaviors.
Having a legal abortion rarely interferes with a woman’s ability to become pregnant or give birth in the future.
People of all genders and sexual orientation can experience sexual dysfunction.
Some sexual behaviors shared by partners include kissing, touching, caressing, massaging, and oral, vaginal, or anal intercourse.
Nonprescription methods of contraception include male and female condoms, foam, gels, and suppositories.
Young people can buy nonprescription contraceptives in a pharmacy, grocery store, market, or convenience store.
In most states, young people can get prescriptions for contraception without their parents’ permission.
Both men and women can give and receive sexua...
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| View all 5 comments |
D. Hupp (MSL quote), USA
<2008-04-03 00:00>
This is by far the best parenting book that I've read, and I've read many good ones. It contains some eye-opening statistics that every parent, guardian, and grandparent should know and discuss frankly among themselves and directly, caringly with the girls they are raising.
This is a highly practical approach to the very difficult matter of developing healthy relationships between fathers and daughters, husbands and wives, and adults and offspring who are between the ages of 5 and 21. It requires achieving a balance between cultivating responsible behavior by fostering trust through openness, adhering to clear boundaries, and instilling life-long values.
What's especially impressive is that the book is based on the clinical experience and research of Dr. Meeker, a pediatrician who has dealt with hundreds of young girls, ranging from young children to college students. I consider this a "must read" for all dads, moms, and grandparents of girls. |
B. Vandehey (MSL quote), USA
<2008-04-03 00:00>
This book is an easy read, and is incredibly engaging. The advice is very tangible and helpful. The personal stories included are very touching and make the points more salient and memorable |
Carol Tyger (MSL quote), USA
<2008-04-03 00:00>
What a wonderful gift to give to your sons, son-in-laws, brothers, etc. Meg gives the very best advice I have ever read - I think it is never to late for a father to BE THERE for his daughter. Mine wasn't but I was fortunate that his lack of closest didn't hinder me the way it did for many of the daughters Meg featured. A MUST read - Thank You Meg! |
Harold (MSL quote), USA
<2008-04-03 00:00>
This is a terrific book for just plain guys, who want to be more than just plain dads. Written by an experienced female pediatrician, wife & mother with tremendous insight into how & why daughters idolize their fathers. How to be a great dad, how to remain a super role model, especially during those trying teen years, when dads tend to back off & let moms take care of all the "girl stuff" & adolescent adjustments(often when they need us the most). It gives us guys validation-having a child is easy, raising one is the most important thing in the world. The common sense wisdom in this book is so powerful it will make you weep, & believe that even in today's climate of superficial beauty we guys can & MUST make our daughters stronger, resilient and able to resist the temptations of our increasingly perilous immoral society. After reading this book you will promise yourself that you will change yourself to be a better person, dad & role model to your daughter. |
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