#79: Daddy-Daughter Dynamic: How Engaged Fathers Lead to Empowered Daughters

[00:00:00] This is your Word for the Week podcast. I'm Pete Stone. Thanks for listening. Jackie Bruton never planned to be a speaker and an author. While managing a successful career in corporate America, she volunteered her time mentoring younger ladies.

[00:00:12] It was in this role as a mentor that she kept hearing over and over about the regrets these younger ladies had because of poor relationship choices they had made. Jackie felt so burdened by this that 16 years ago,

[00:00:24] she walked away from her successful career to dedicate her life to helping teens make good choices. She's the founder and CEO of Motivation in 3D, a motivational speaking company. In 2016 Jackie published a book for teen girls titled,

[00:00:40] Seven Secrets Guys Will Never Tell You. She currently resides in the Metro Atlanta area. Recently Jackie was the keynote speaker at a daddy daughter dance and was kind enough to talk about her keynote address in this interview. You can learn more about her and download her free e-book

[00:00:56] Seven Things Every Parent of a Teen Needs to Know Before Having to Talk on her website, JackieBruton.com. So Jackie the first question before we get into your keynote a little bit. I want to know what burned your heart so much for this?

[00:01:12] Why did you walk away from a successful job? To begin something that was very uncertain and that was headed in a totally different trajectory. Yeah, well during the course of my career with Proctor and Gamble, I lived in a number of different cities and

[00:01:29] every time I lived in a different city, I always participated in a mentoring program and I was always mentoring young ladies and I kept hearing over and over and over again from these young ladies about their regrets and

[00:01:41] I kept saying wow these young ladies are way too young to have these kind of regrets like maybe if someone told them what they were worth. Maybe if someone told them what they deserve, maybe made some different choices and then I said you know what?

[00:01:52] Why can't I be that somebody? So I like to say that I made a decision that it wasn't enough for me to be successful, that I want to be significant.

[00:01:59] And I shared that in the classroom with the kids and challenged them to try to make something out of their life that will make a difference in somebody else's life because when you're successful you know you add value to your own life.

[00:02:12] But when you're significant you add value to somebody else's life and that's what legacies are made of so I kind of wanted to not just leave a legacy, but I wanted to live a legacy. Daughters need four things from their dads. One is validation. Two is protection.

[00:02:28] Three is provision and four is guidance. And you know I kind of have a different spend on all of those than what you would typically think about when you think about like provision and stuff. Yeah so tell us a little bit about validation. What do you mean by

[00:02:43] validating men should validate their daughters? I, that a father determines what a girl feels about herself. And so if the father doesn't show her that she's loved she will look for love from other places.

[00:03:00] And it's funny I had a guy tell me once he said the way he teaches his daughter about true love is he says when you go to a bank the way they teach bank tellers how to identify counterfeit money is by showing them real.

[00:03:17] And they study the real money like so closely that if something comes up and doesn't look like that they can recognize it right away. So he said this is what I do.

[00:03:27] I'm going to show my daughter what real love is, that love is unconditional so that the first time a guy comes along and says if you love me you would. Like she'll already know love is unconditional. Like I don't have to give anything. Doesn't place demands on me.

[00:03:41] Right I don't have to give anything to get love. One of the big issues we have is that girls have low self-esteem and it comes from the culture but

[00:03:52] it's funny because I tell fathers that they have a lot to do with their daughter's self-esteem and telling her she's beautiful but they can't just stress that she's beautiful because that's what society does. It makes her believe that she is how she looks.

[00:04:07] Okay so validation doesn't just mean tell her she's pretty that's important right but there's a lot more to it because in our culture girls start thinking that their worth is equivalent to how they look. Right. Okay so unpack that validation more.

[00:04:22] So they have to tell her that she can do anything she wants to do. They have to tell her that she's intelligent. They have to talk to her about character traits and I love the fact that you're such a caring person.

[00:04:33] You know if they can build her up she's going to believe about herself what her dad believes about her and I don't think fathers understand how much power they have

[00:04:43] to determine how girls see themselves and if they don't have higher self-esteem then what they're going to do is you know the first person who comes along and makes them feel special they're like putty in their hands. Wow. Wow.

[00:04:56] That kind of leads into the second point you make about validation is learning to speak the daughter's love language. What do you mean by that? Where do you get that that that wording from? Well Gary Chapman has written a book called The Five Love Languages.

[00:05:12] He has several different versions but there's one called The Five Love Languages of Teens but the love languages are the same whether they're adults or teens and what I often hear from young ladies is I don't feel like my parents love me.

[00:05:26] Now it doesn't mean the parents don't love them but if they don't feel like they love them then you know it's not it's like a moot point. So The Five Love Languages are acts of service, gifts, quality time, words of affirmation and did I say acts of service?

[00:05:45] Yeah and touch. Touch physical touch. Yes. And so let's say a father believes that I need to buy my daughter a lot of things so that she can show see that I love her but if his daughter's love language is quality time you could spend

[00:06:00] millions of dollars on her and she's still not going to feel loved. Or validated. Right. necessarily. Yeah and there's a resource that they can go to The Five Love Languages of Teens website and they can actually you know it can help them determine what their daughter's love

[00:06:15] language is. Yeah I'll put a link to that in the show notes for this interview so you can link to that from my from my blog. Yeah let me let me share with you a story that I just had like two weeks ago from a young lady

[00:06:28] who said that her parents got divorced when she was five years old and she said I didn't see my dad a whole lot and when I did see him he always talked about my weight

[00:06:39] and she said I was a chunky little girl and he always talked about you need to stop eating so much you need to start and she said so in my mind I felt like I was fat.

[00:06:49] Now I bet you her dad never said the word you're fat but what she heard because he always focused on her weight is that she heard that he was fat and she said so my confidence and my self-esteem

[00:07:02] was in the tank because I felt like if that's how my dad sees me I guarantee you that's how every other guy will see me. So here she was 16 years old and she's had four sexual partners because she says anytime a guy came

[00:07:16] along and made me feel special and I felt like well maybe he doesn't think I'm fat she did whatever you asked her to do. Because she was wanting to feel right validated.

[00:07:30] And and she felt like her dad contributed to the fact that she didn't feel like she was pretty or she felt like she was less than. So now I have to do something to feel better about myself.

[00:07:43] You know Jackie this kind of speaks to a bigger issue I guess is fathers learning how to communicate to their daughters and I think this learning her love language taking this assessment will help fathers do that unpack what that looks like if if she needs words of affirmation

[00:08:00] well how can you do you can learn it's it's a learnable skill but there's so much that gets lost in translation. I would say most of us with our children would are never meaning to communicate what they hear

[00:08:14] but our children hear what the receiver of the message receives and what we are transmitting are often very difficult things different things. So I appreciate what you're saying about just that engagement because engagement that time just

[00:08:30] learning to know our daughter or a child whoever it may be that is the decipher code I think that helps them understand and make sense out of what we're trying to communicate to them.

[00:08:42] But I think the other missing pieces that fathers don't always understand how kids spell love and kids spell love T I M E. Yeah because regardless of what their love language is right

[00:08:54] they the fact that you would spend time with them and they know that you could be busy you know that's what they really value more than anything I've had so many girls in

[00:09:04] divorce situations who've said to me I would rather my father spend time with me than send the child support check. Wow and nobody would ever think that a teenager would say I would rather have this time than his money.

[00:09:15] Yeah yeah but I've heard it over and over and over again. Yeah at this point I want to make a comment about a military context this is what's challenging and I've heard this time after time over the last 10 years as an army chaplain

[00:09:32] of soldiers having to deploy come back and then they have to train they go through a training cycle their time with their family is so stop and go and it's so intermittent sometimes it's uncertain when they're going to get to spend that time.

[00:09:44] That's why I think what you're talking about is so valuable to military members because what you're doing is you're equipping them with knowledge so that when they do have those windows of time they can really maximize the opportunity and really leverage some of what

[00:10:00] we're talking about knowing what our daughter's love language is and really working on the skill of speaking that specific love language during the limited time that we have it can really maximize it can really as Gary Chapman talks about in his book really fill the love tank

[00:10:17] so that when you're gone for a while there's still love in the love tank that she can draw from but you know with technology today even when fathers are gone and deployed FaceTime

[00:10:27] you know it's like you can there's some things that you can do to show them that you want to be with them even if you can't but that you want to and I'm going to do everything in my power

[00:10:38] to do as much as I can because I think if if daughters know that their father is making the effort that goes a long way yeah yeah because I think they understand more than we think

[00:10:48] they understand about it's a limitation but what are you doing you know in lieu of being able to be here physically you know are you writing me a letter are you you know doing FaceTime whatever

[00:11:02] it's possible are you doing that awesome number one is validation and you talk about telling her things that that will awaken in her a sense of destiny and potential and number two

[00:11:15] is learn her love language so there's two practical tips to help validate her and you said that when when this is done well when a daughter is validated she will believe about herself what is what her father tells her right right okay what about number two

[00:11:37] number two I forget which order I said them in was it here on the notes it says it says okay provision um provision and a lot of a lot of dads think that provision just means

[00:11:49] I'm financially providing you know for them I'm providing you know security I'm providing a standard of living and the problem is if that is the main focus of giving them you know the provision of

[00:12:06] you should know that I love you because there's a roof over your head and by the way did you see the movie fences I did it's a play that yes put into a movie that that exactly very tense

[00:12:19] exchange in the dialogue between Denzel and his son I can't remember the actors or the characters names where he's basically saying I put a roof over your head I don't need to tell

[00:12:28] you I love you and how gripping that was and you could just see the hurt on the son's face it's true that is a form of love it's but it's really more of a responsibility

[00:12:40] so yeah sorry about that but I think in that one too it was the difference of the love language like he's thinking I'm showing you that I love you because I'm doing all these things for you and

[00:12:49] the thought that the son wanted him to you know spend time with him but it's more than just providing it's providing a role model of what's the quote that says when a girl's date first date

[00:13:04] is with her dad every other man must measure up oh wow that's so good so it's like what's the role model yielded the father will determine what she will look for wow what she thinks she deserves

[00:13:15] he sets the standard like what is she gonna look for what does she think she deserves and I remember in a class a girl said once she said I think the reason why a lot of girls accept like stuff and

[00:13:27] relationships that they shouldn't like physical abuse or being mistreated is because if their fathers aren't there and that's who's supposed to provide for them and protect them if they're not there

[00:13:38] then they think well if maybe it's because I don't deserve it and if I didn't deserve it from my father then I'm not maybe I don't deserve it from anybody I want to bring in a theological

[00:13:47] point here not to no that's great but from the Christian theological tradition this is the root of where humanity falls apart because in the garden women always get the the rap for being the one who took the bite out of the fruit whatever the

[00:14:06] fruit was that the serpent tempted her with but the bigger question is where was Adam right he was not protecting her she was vulnerable and she was willing to succumb to the temptation of the serpent

[00:14:20] when her protector should have been there protecting her so ultimately it all falls I think on man's shoulders to be the provider and the protector and what you're talking about provision is providing this this kind of security and this kind of affirmation right right and I just don't

[00:14:39] think fathers understand that provision goes much more than just financial yeah yeah you mentioned a couple of tips here number one start early taking her on dates so she'll know how she should be treated

[00:14:51] right and I was a date look like how does a father like how does a father date his daughter you know what it's taken her to breakfast every Saturday morning and I mean it could be another

[00:15:00] meal it could be another day of the week but I think um one of the things I think I mentioned also is start traditions okay like if a daughter knows that my father has carved time out of his

[00:15:10] schedule just for me on this day for this meal and we do this every single week and that kind of speaks to the validation right all of these are intertwined yeah right yeah they really are she's part of his

[00:15:22] schedule um you know I heard a quote the other day I can't remember who shared it with me they said men need to be the kind of be the kind of man that you want your daughters to fall in love

[00:15:36] with yep and I heard that quote that taking your daughter on dates is a very simple way to start established opening the door for her or just teaching her things like that okay so that's

[00:15:48] awesome simple things just starting early starting traditions um and then you said another one here invest in experiences instead of things yes I remember reading this quote once it said things don't make us happy experiences do and I totally agree because all the things that you buy

[00:16:08] your daughter a year from now two years from now three years from now they won't remember those things most likely but you could create memories that they will have for the rest of their lives

[00:16:19] and I just think you know if we could create memories and while we're creating memories guess what we're teaching them values like when you're spending it goes back to this time thing yeah

[00:16:29] it's like create memories and I like to say don't spend money on things but invest money on experiences and memories well because I think they're two totally different things you're either spending or you're investing and investing is always much better yeah that pays dividends down

[00:16:45] road yep um that's great and and you said when you do this well your daughter your daughter will learn how to set the bar on who she deserves when dating and she'll know exactly how she should be

[00:16:57] treated exactly so the first step is uh validation the second step is provision and third you said protection talk about protection again this is one where I think fathers think they limit what protection means this means I'm gonna keep them safe and it does

[00:17:16] mean that you protect them but you also protect them from a culture that is just devastating to girl self-esteem and I think one of the issues that we have is teens have kids have been given

[00:17:32] technology that their brains can't handle well and so now we have you know girls who are happening upon pornography like I just had a mother um tell me that she I did I did another

[00:17:44] webinar called seven things your teen seven secrets your teen daughter will never tell you this mother had her 11 year old daughter listen to the webinar with her the next weekend and I talked about one of the secrets is that she's probably been exposed to pornography

[00:18:00] and she may be addicted and she hasn't told you because of the guilt of shame the next weekend she says her 11 year old daughter came down the stairs like boohoo crying and confesses to her that she's been watching pornography for three months

[00:18:17] and she now has a daughter in therapy and most teens are most kids are exposed to pornography at the age of 11 that's the average age of exposure and they happen upon it by accident and so it's not just pornography there's social media you know studies have

[00:18:32] shown that the more social media that not just teenagers but even adults consume the more depressed they are because it's this whole comparison thing and so now it used to be that girls would

[00:18:43] compare themselves to people they saw in their classroom now they get to compare themselves to people they will never meet and they have a filter on and so they say I don't look like this

[00:18:53] person so I feel horrible what they don't understand is that person doesn't look like that person because they have a filter on you know so I think it's protecting them from technology and the media social media and even you know the the television shows that they watch

[00:19:09] it's just it's just a cesspool out there with all of the technology in the media yeah you mentioned that especially for soldiers the the average profile of a service member is just someone who loves to serve and wants to be a part of serving something bigger than themselves

[00:19:32] the military is made up of servants and we often go and do a lot of things away from home in service to our nation right to try to protect what we hold dear at home

[00:19:47] and what a tragedy when we focus so much on that that we lose sight of protecting our very own daughters or our family at home and so that's one practical way you talk about that is

[00:19:59] just technology and engaging our daughters you know what they're looking at what they're consuming another tip that you talked about was when she becomes a teen right and begins dating make sure that you have a conversation about her expectation right because the other way that fathers protect

[00:20:17] their daughters is from you know boys who may take advantage of them because of daddy issues and so when a father is physically present and actively engaged in a girl's life they that provides protection from them from other guys i mean teenage boys have told me that

[00:20:34] that they treat girls differently if their fathers are in their house then they do when the fathers aren't and so when i ask them why they say one because you know that her father used to be a

[00:20:45] teenage boy and he knows exactly what you're thinking or planning but the other thing they say is out of respect for the dad and so i don't think fathers understand your mere presence there

[00:20:57] when she's dating is a protective factor from boys that might otherwise try to take advantage of her and so one of the tips i gave is have a conversation when your daughter becomes a teenager

[00:21:11] make sure you sit down face to face and have a conversation with every before she goes on any date to say these are my expectations i expect my daughter to come back the same way she left

[00:21:21] you know i expect you to respect her the same as you would want somebody to respect your little sister or to respect your future daughter and and when fathers have those conversations teenage boys tell

[00:21:31] me it makes a difference a huge difference yeah um you say when when fathers do this well when they protect their daughters well and they're engaged with their daughters uh what impact will this have on their daughters um it it keeps her from being um

[00:21:50] preyed upon you know from somebody that might take advantage of her and an unhealthy relationship but it also helps her to have self-esteem that's high enough because she's not you know caught up in the whole social media and she's been protected against the culture um that

[00:22:08] the media you know makes her believe that she is how she looks the first step is uh validation second step is provision not just financial right um the third step is protection not just physical

[00:22:24] but physical also right and just having um projecting that presence in her life emotionally physically uh so that she feels safe and that she expects to be treated with safety

[00:22:38] and security by it by guys that she starts dating the fourth uh the fourth step uh tell us about the fourth step um is father guides provides guidance and that's in a couple of different

[00:22:50] ways the first one is like he is the only person that can tell her how a guy thinks so you give her the guidance of this is what when a guy says this this is what he means when

[00:23:03] this happens this is i'm providing you the guidance because i was a teenage boy um but it's not just guiding for relationships i think a huge piece and we had this conversation before the interview

[00:23:17] that i think um a lot of parents miss out on is guiding her to be able to set boundaries for herself and the way she can set boundaries for herself is to for the the father or mother

[00:23:31] to set boundaries for her when she's little okay so i i think i uh shared about one of my facebook friends posted on facebook one day he has a daughter and he says well somebody please give me um

[00:23:44] tips on how to say no to your daughter the older my daughter gets the further no gets i mean you know i just can't say no anymore and you know because you know daddy's girl

[00:23:52] and fathers you know can't say no to their daughters and i responded to him and said you need to say no to her now so she can say no to herself later because helping establish right control self control is a better predictor of success than iq

[00:24:08] and i'll tell you about a study that was done at stanford university years ago it's called the marshmallow test i don't know if you've heard of it or not yeah i just watched the other

[00:24:16] you did just watch it so it's like it they took these four-year-olds and they gave each four-year-old one marshmallow and they said you can eat to either eat this one marshmallow now or when i come back

[00:24:24] in 10 minutes you can have two so they were trying to determine do these kids as young as for understand the benefit of delayed gratification do they have self control impulse control

[00:24:35] and you know the funny part is the video that they put on the kids and you know everything that they do to try to keep from eating the marshmallow in the end two-thirds of the kids

[00:24:42] didn't eat the marshmallow and a third did so two-thirds had self control a third didn't 14 years later they went back and they found those four-year-olds they're 18 years old and their seniors in high school and that was their plan from the very beginning it was a

[00:24:55] long-term study to determine this self-control predict success and they measured them up in about five areas grades whether or not they got in trouble with the law whether or not their girls gotten pregnant and in every area the kids that did not eat the marshmallow at four

[00:25:10] they are far better than the kids who did and the area that was most profound was sat scores and this is when the max sat was 1600 on average the kids that had self-control at four and didn't

[00:25:21] eat the marshmallow scored 210 points higher than the kids who did because self-control is a character trait and if you can demonstrate it in one area it pays huge dividends in every other area and they went back and found those four-year-olds when they were in the 30s

[00:25:35] and they said the ones who had self-control at four had better finances careers health and families so if you talk about helping your daughter live up to her fullest potential like that's that's just huge yeah because the younger they learn it it follows them throughout their lives

[00:25:53] little things like teaching them just teaching saying no saying no and teaching them how to say no and how to set boundaries and helping them understand why you can't always always get

[00:26:04] what you want i've got to put a plug in for your book so every parent should have the sex talk with their teen at some point with their daughter daughter or son and one of the in your dreams

[00:26:18] destinies and decisions dvd series you have a talk the sex talk that every teen girl needs to hear is that right right um it when was that uh when was that presentation made well i actually have two

[00:26:35] there's one for girls and one for guys okay and i recorded both of those um in 2014 and that's an actual one hour assembly that i did at a middle school and i just recorded it so this is my plug

[00:26:47] if if you don't know where to start having this conversation start by ordering this dvd off of jackie's website um and watching it and uh getting some guidance from it and maybe even watching

[00:26:59] it with your teenager or pre-teenager right and i'll tell you after i did those two dvds in 2014 parents came to me and said what about us so in 2015 i released a third dvd which is the sex

[00:27:12] talk every parent needs to have okay and that's on my website as well so that's a 90 minute presentation it was actual parent presentation that i did that i that i just videotaped okay so

[00:27:23] that's you know that's available as well and that i talk about um the five love languages in there i talk about the 40 developmental assets i don't know if you're familiar with the search institute's um study where they're they're 40 things that every child needs in order to thrive

[00:27:40] and their assets and so they like to say kids aren't at risk they're at need so they just need more assets and that's a great resource that i'll also give you to put

[00:27:52] you know put out there as a link that they can go and it tells you how to build these assets okay because they've studied this is almost 50 year 50 year old like research that they've done

[00:28:02] and they said the more assets that a teen has the less likely they are to participate in negative behavior and the more the less assets they have the more likely but the more assets they have

[00:28:14] the more likely there they are to participate in thriving behavior okay so if parents can you know build their assets that the kids have they increase their chance of reaching their fullest potential as well okay it's almost like clifton's strength finders almost sounds like

[00:28:30] you're playing to your child's strengths right investing in in the strengths the aptitudes that they already demonstrate right rather than just trying to focus on their weaknesses or deficiencies or whatever right um wow that's great um so these links by the way will be in the

[00:28:46] in my show notes on the blog uh so you can there'll be a link straight to a jackie's dvd page to or her her homepage uh so great resources there so the fourth step was guidance um just providing

[00:28:59] her guidance and how to have self-control um having some boundaries and you give some tips on how to do that um can you talk about some of those tips on how to how to teach them boundaries

[00:29:12] yeah and to provide this kind of guidance um one is to there's a book that I highly recommend called it know why kids need to hear it and how parents can say it and this book is

[00:29:25] goes for every age level from when they're toddlers to when they're you know in elementary school to preteens the teenagers and it gives practical tips on how to say no in a way because

[00:29:37] no is not the destination no is the road to yes oh I like that because what you want is your kids to have a bigger yes out there so that it'll make it easier than to say no to other things

[00:29:48] that kind of awakening a sense of destiny that's part of your messaging right to kids right is that you have a tremendous destiny right into awakening a vision for that destiny um well

[00:30:01] that's great so you have a bigger yes uh that allows you to say no to the smaller things much easier right because if they don't have a bigger yes they'll say yes to anything so it's like what

[00:30:13] is it that you say I want this thing so badly that I'm not going to let anybody or anything keep me from getting in and this is I'll give you this other point that I love to share with

[00:30:23] parents is that we have tried to change teenage behavior for years using two words do and get and we talked about consequences which I think they need to know about which two words do and get

[00:30:33] if you if you do this you will get that okay and so we it's like fear you know pride is a better motivator than fear so it's like that might change their behavior short term but I think

[00:30:43] two better words to use to change their behavior long term are see and feel how do you see yourself how do you feel about yourself because until they can see and feel about themselves the way they should

[00:30:54] they'll make all kind of bad decisions and they won't even know what it cost them so I like to say I teach towards something and not away from something I teach them toward their dreams

[00:31:02] and their destinies and their goals and not away from consequences so love is a lot more powerful than fear exactly absolutely absolutely so number one validation number two is provision number three protection and number four guidance and when fathers are engaged with their daughters

[00:31:25] in this way what's going to happen they will have daughters who are confident um have high self-esteem and have lived up to their fullest potential awesome Jackie Bruton thank you so much please visit

[00:31:39] jackiebruton.com and see the for her free ebook that all you have to do is click on a link and you get a download yeah absolutely and some of these other resources you can find on her website um every

[00:31:54] sex talk the sex talk that every parent needs to have for boys and for girls and then one for parents to help them know how to have that talk yes uh along with her book that she just wrote

[00:32:06] which is entitled seven secrets guys will never tell you a teen girl's guide on love sex and relationships