Fathers play a crucial role in their children's emotional security, providing safety, love, and a sense of worth. When these foundational needs go unmet, kids may seek validation from unhealthy influences. The discussion dives into the balance between guidance and compassion, highlighting the risks of being overly critical or strict. It emphasizes that if children don’t receive support at home, they might look for it in dangerous places. Understanding this dynamic is essential for fostering healthier relationships and better outcomes.
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Provide Essential Needs
Prioritize giving your children love, support, and a sense of security.
If they don't receive these from you, they'll seek them elsewhere, potentially in harmful ways.
insights INSIGHT
Consequences of Lack of Support
Children's unmet needs can lead them to dangerous places and behaviors if parents aren't attentive.
This can include drugs, gangs, or reckless behavior, stemming from a lack of love and support at home.
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We know that our kids want to feel good, feel safe, feel loved. We know they want to feel that someone is proud of them, that they’re talented, that they’re worth something. We also know that they’ll want to have fun, take risks, mess up, be crazy, and feel the pleasures of the world.
As the person in charge, as the person who wants them to be successful in life, it may come to pass that you are at odds with those feelings more often than you’d like. Because you see their potential, you are critical of their choices. Because you are worried about them, you’re strict. Because you know how hard and competitive the world is, you push them...and then maybe you push them some more. And because you have so much on your plate, you don’t always say the nice thing, the obvious, supportive, reassuring thing.
The problem is: If our kids aren’t feeling safe or loved or supported by us, where will they get it from? Because they will go out and try to find it. If Dad is blocked off because Dad is busy, Daughter will go find love in the wrong places. If Dad is a hard ass, because Dad regrets his choices in his own youth, and he pushes too hard, Son might rebel or learn to value the wrong things. The gender of the child doesn’t matter. Neither does their natural personality. If Dad doesn’t give his kids what they need, they’ll get it somewhere else and it will almost certainly not be from the right or best place.
It might be from drugs or a gang or bad influences or reckless behavior or from a false belief that you can earn acceptance and appreciation. All of that is wrong. Your kids deserved those things at birth. And they deserve them from you.
The Daily Dad