100 Things Every Father of a Daughter Should Know

Your first real test is a ponytail. You'll fail it for about two years, and then one Tuesday it comes out clean and she doesn't even check the mirror. That's the job in miniature. Show up for something small, do it badly, keep doing it until you're good.

The rest of it is longer and harder and mostly unglamorous. What follows is a hundred things worth knowing before you need them. Take the ones that fit your girl.

While she's small

1. Learn one ponytail and one braid. The braid takes about forty attempts.
2. Go to the tea party. Drink the imaginary tea. Compliment the imaginary tea.
3. She'll paint your nails. Wear it to the hardware store.
4. Get down on the floor. Eye level changes the entire conversation.
5. Carry her on your shoulders while you can. There's a last time, and you won't know it's the last time.
6. Buy the detangler spray. Six bucks, and it ends a nightly war.
7. Let her help with the oil change even though it doubles the time.
8. Read the same book two hundred times without sighing.
9. Learn her stuffed animals' names. Use them correctly.
10. Roughhouse with her. Daughters need to know what safe strength feels like.
11. Dance with her standing on your feet.
12. She's watching how you talk to her mother. Always. Starting now.

Things to say out loud

1. "I'm proud of you" isn't the same as "good job." Say both. Mean the first.
2. Tell her she's beautiful and tell her she's brave in the same week.
3. Say "I was wrong, I'm sorry, will you forgive me." All three parts.
4. Never compare her to her sister. Not even as a joke, especially as a joke.
5. Ask what the hardest part of her day was. "How was school" gets you nothing.
6. "I don't know, let's find out" beats bluffing.
7. Praise the work you watched her do, not only the trophy she brought home.
8. "You can call me any hour and there's no lecture on the phone." Then honor it.
9. Use her name when you greet her. Not "kiddo" every single time.
10. Tell her the story of the day she was born, once a year, with the same details.
11. When she asks if you love her mom, say yes out loud.
12. "You don't owe anybody a hug." That includes you.

Listening, which is harder

1. When she's upset, ask if she wants help or wants to be heard. Then obey the answer.
2. Silence in the truck is where she talks. Take the long way home.
3. Don't solve it in the first ninety seconds. Count to ten first.
4. Her tears aren't a tactic. Sometimes they're just tears.
5. Phone face down on the table. She's keeping score, and she's right to.
6. Laugh at her jokes even when the punchline needs work.
7. She'll bring you the real thing at 10:40 at night when you're exhausted. Stay up.
8. Never tease her about food, weight or her body. Not once, not ever.
9. When a friend hurts her, don't hate the friend forever. They'll be fine by Thursday.
10. Learn to say nothing at all while she vents about a problem you could fix with one call.

Skills people assume she won't need

1. Teach her to change a tire in the dark, in the rain, with a flashlight in her teeth.
2. She should know how to check oil, jump a battery, and where her spare actually lives.
3. Teach her to throw with her elbow above her shoulder.
4. Handshake, eye contact, full name. Practice it on the neighbors.
5. A drill, a stud finder, a level. Let her hang something heavy and trust it.
6. Teach her to back a trailer down a driveway. Let her hit nothing at low speed.
7. Clean a fish or dress a bird once, even if she never does it again.
8. One match, one fire.
9. Swim well enough to be bored in deep water.
10. Read a paper map. Batteries die in the exact canyon where you need the map.
11. Say "that doesn't work for me" without apologizing afterward.
12. Tip twenty percent and learn the server's name.
13. Sharpen a knife. Hand one over handle first.
14. Walk to her car with the keys out and her chin up.

Safety, plainly

1. Teach her to shoot. Start with a .22 rifle and ear protection that actually fits her head.
2. The four rules of gun safety before the first round. She recites them back to you.
3. Show her the fire extinguisher in every house she ever lives in.
4. Teach her "NO" at full volume. Practice in the backyard until it's loud and ugly.
5. A man who won't take no the first time has just told her exactly who he is.
6. Give her a code word to text. You come get her, no questions, no exceptions.
7. She's allowed to leave a party without explaining herself to anybody.
8. Never a drink she didn't watch get poured, and never one she set down and came back to.
9. Walk her through her insurance card and roadside number before she needs them at midnight.
10. A real self-defense class, with contact. Go with her and let her put you on the mat.

Boys, and the man she'll marry

1. Your marriage is her first picture of what a man is worth living with.
2. She'll tolerate the treatment she's used to. Set the floor high at home.
3. Meet him. Shake his hand. Ask what he's building with his life.
4. The shotgun-on-the-porch routine is a tired bit. Retire it.
5. Watch how he talks about his mother and how he treats the waitress.
6. Take her out yourself. Door, chair, check. She'll learn the standard by feel.
7. Describe the difference between a man in love and a man who's merely interested.
8. Forbid him and you've made him fascinating. Ask better questions instead.
9. "He'll change" is a plan with no steps in it.
10. When her heart gets broken, don't say you never liked him. Say "that hurts, and it's supposed to," and then sit there.
11. Be the man she measures them against, and make that a warm bar, not a sad one.
12. If she marries well, some of the credit is yours. Don't take all of it.

Faith and the shape of her character

1. Pray over her out loud, hand on her head, starting the week she comes home.
2. She learns whether God is safe by watching whether you are.
3. Take her to church yourself. Don't send her with her mother while you read the news.
4. Let her see you repent, not only correct.
5. Read Proverbs with her. A chapter a day, thirty-one days, then start over.
6. When she asks why good people suffer, "I don't know, and I still believe" is an honest answer.
7. Give where she can see it. Serve where she can come along and get her hands dirty.
8. Her worth isn't a performance review. Say it before the world tells her otherwise.
9. Give her real chores with real consequences and no rescue.
10. Hold her to her word on small things so it's automatic on the big ones.
11. Let her fail a science project you could have saved at 11 p.m.
12. Apologize to your wife in front of her. No lecture replaces that.

The years she pushes away

1. Around thirteen she stops telling you everything. That's development, not betrayal.
2. Keep the ritual anyway. Same donut shop, same Saturday, no agenda.
3. Don't take the eye roll personally. Do take the slammed door seriously.
4. Discipline is for her character, not your dignity. Check which one you're defending.
5. Never correct her in anger. Walk to the mailbox and come back.
6. Pick two hills. Her room, her music and her clothes aren't all three.
7. If she's angry at you and she's right, say so out loud.
8. Keep coming back. She's testing whether you'll stay, and staying is the answer.

The long game

1. Write her letters on paper. She'll keep every one in a shoebox you never see.
2. Set money aside quietly and tell her later. Ask an actual financial advisor how to do it properly.
3. Don't turn her bedroom into a home gym six weeks after she moves out.
4. Call her first. Leave the voicemail even when she doesn't pick up.
5. When she asks for advice as an adult, ask whether she wants your opinion before you give it.
6. Her husband isn't your replacement. Welcome him like a son and step back like a man.
7. If you're paying for the wedding, say the number once, kindly, and hold it.
8. Practice the dance. A box step and one spin, six Tuesdays in the kitchen.
9. Don't cry during the toast. You will anyway. Bring a handkerchief and use it.
10. One day she'll hand you a baby and say "this is Grandpa." Every ponytail was practice for holding still.