Congratulations! You have a daughter. It's now your job to prepare her for the world at large, teach her how to be the best she can be, and understand that the changes to her body are natural and will happen whether you like it or not.
...This is mainly for the dads of the world who many not have an idea of what they're doing.
Reddit user, u/joho3883, wanted to get the word out when they asked:
Women of Reddit, what are some things a dad should know about raising a girl?
You're Creating A Legacy
How you treat her and her mom is how she will expect to be treated by her partner when she's older.
Let Them Fend For Themselves
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Don't be too overprotective. How long can you protect her? One day she'll be on her own and she'll not know how to. Teach her how to be independent instead. To do things on her own. Teach her self-defense. Teach her to be safe.
Everything They Say Has Relevance
I know you probably don't want to hear about what happened with Sarah and Kyle today in prealgebra or the character break down of her latest teen novel but just listen to her. The moment you dismiss her thoughts and interests is the moment that wall starts going up between. Make an effort to remember some names and details and it'll mean everything to her. Don't laugh at her or get mad when she bursts into tears over something that you perceive as insignificant. Not only is she young and her world is smaller but if she's above the age of ten her emotions are running wild.
Basically just treat her like her thoughts and feelings are valid. It's so easy to forget about how big your emotions feel when you're young. And the reason that I, as a 26 year old woman, still talk to my father weekly and greet him with a big hug is that he listened with empathy.
It's Going To Happen Every Month
I was raised by a single dad. When I started my period, he made it clear that my period was not embarrassing, and he would get me whatever I needed to take care of myself.
Also, if there's not a "mom" around, please, please ask some friends how to manage your daughter's hair.
Seriously. Every. Month.
Just buy her the tampons and don't be embarassed about it. My dad raised my sister and I alone after my mom passed away when I was 11 and he was always so weird about this - MEN, it's not a big deal!!! The cashier knows it's not for you LOL
Words Have Power
If you do nothing else right, speak kindly.
I don't have the best dad, he was always fighting his own demons, and therefor not all that present but he has literally only ever been kind to me and that sticks out more than anything. He praises everything we do, compliments us endlessly, and always made us feel like we were obviously capable of anything. It has always been easy to see/feel his shortcomings really didn't have anything to do with me and were his own personal issues.
That's Why They're Called "Delicates"
do not put bras or underwear in the dryer (single dad to now college age dryer)
EDIT.....college age daughter, not college age dryer (but the dryer is 20 years old as well)
Respect Every Relationship
Don't talk sh-t talk their mother.
Don't poison your daughter's relationship with her other parent if she's lucky enough to have one.
Keep Your Mouth Shut
As she gets older, don't make comments about body hair, bra straps, or exposed shoulders. It's uncomfortable and can cause self image issues.
Keep It Cool, Dad
Don't start acting as though she will turn into a raging monster the second she hits puberty. It's a weird expectation to have placed on you. On that note, don't blame everything she feels on her hormones. Don't lose your sh-t when she starts needing a bra. She has breasts now. So what? A father freaking out or being weird about it will just complicate how she feels even more.
If mom can't take her shopping, have her sized, take her to a store, get her a fitting room. Done. Don't make her feel weird or bad about needing one. Also, it isn't hard to have her sized. My store won't size you, but they will teach girls how to do so properly and provide you with a room, measuring tape, and advice.
Give Them Room
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When they are teenagers, respect their space as it's a tough time for them and honestly it's really difficult to talk to your dad about. We have mood swings and you might think we hate you but we love you dearly! Be there for her when she needs it too!
They Don't Just Want To Know "Girl" Things
Make sure to teach us "boy" stuff, too! I was an only child, and my dad still taught me to drive a tractor, change a tire, hang drywall, and fix things around the house. These skills have come in handy many times in the years since and especially when I was living alone. Plus, it was great bonding time for me and dad :)
Teach Them To Be Ready
She is going to get hit on so much earlier than you think. I started getting whistled at walking past construction sites when I was 11. Teach her the skills to deal with rejecting someone politely but firmly and sticking to her guns (metaphorically)
Make Them Comfortable
Be their friend as well as their dad, so they are comfortable coming to you worry free.
People Change All The Time
Not just girls, but all children's personality change, as they grow up they wont be the same person they were 5 or 10 years ago. So don't expect your kid to be the same person they were when they were 5.
Especially dont glorify the way they were when they were little and painting it like that was when they were at their best, because then that makes them feel awful for changing and developing as a person. Speaking from experience here.
Let's Run Down A Bunch!
Always depends on the age of the kids.
As a father of 5 wonderful girls, aged from 3 to 16, there are a couple of things:
Treat their mother and them with respect (I think that's one of the most important things, and it has also already been pointed out here).
It is normal that they are stubborn. Let them.
It is not normal that some boys are d****. I often hear the argument "boys will be boys", which is often an excuse that some boys are just idiots. I can guarantee you it is not normal. DON'T let them think that this is normal!
As someone already pointed out: if you have to comb the hair, start at the bottom and work up. My girls all love their hair. Take your time, maybe learn how to make her hair (there are a lot of FB groups about it, and youtube tutorials. Daddydaughter hair factory is the first that comes to my mind).
Forget the stereotypes. If they want to watch Ninjago instead of my little poney, that's ok. Girls don't have to only play with puppets. One of mine loves playing with cars, imagining she's a Ninja etc.
Once they hit "pre-puberty" (so the age of 10, when their body starts to transform) they may change their behavior and interests. Help them go through that. It settles after one or two years, usually when they start getting their period.
They don't need to be ashamed when they have their period. And there's nothing wrong if you buy tampons etc for them. Make the first step, and when you buy groceries, write them a message if they need some of these products.
Treat them and their mother with respect (I know, I already wrote this, but it is really important, as you may be the standard of what they are looking from their future partner)
Talk openly about drugs and sex with them. Those things are often stigmatized in our society.
A hug is sometimes better than talking
It is normal that they have different interests than you.
Don't make them feel ashamed when you see their boyfriend for the first time (even if it may be funny). Talk with them about what you think about him, but don't be rude to him. They will meet him anyway. They shouldn't make it in secrecy.
No dad jokes when their friends are there.
Once they have a boyfriend (or even before), make sure to have condoms at home.
Condoms are like 1mm thin. Boys saying that they don't feel something if they use a condom are idiots. Make her know that he should put that thing on.
If someone is their best friend today, it doesn't mean it is also their best friend tomorrow :-)
They shall enjoy their youth and freedom.
Don't lie about their body shape and weight. If they are a little chubby, then tell them (however, chose your words wisely), and if they want to lose weight help them do it. Go with her for a run i.e.
This one may be only my personal opinion: They may lie about some things. Don't be too consequent or harsh about it. Some small lies are ok, as long as they don't lie about the things that matter. But if they lie, they should know that you know it (skeptical look etc)
Make sure that they don't eat only crisps and cookies in their free time, or when they are in school or lunchtime. This could backfire once they are in puberty. Teach them about food.
If you forbid something you make it much more interesting (i.e .softdrinks, cookies, later maybe meeting a boy etc)
No mobile phones during lunchtime (again, my personal opinion)
Treat them and their mother with respect (I can't stress this enough)
What's something you wish all men would know about raising girls? Share it with us!
I just can't see anyone else saying those words other than the people who did. And it's not that America can't do great fantasy, look at Buffy. Which also benefitted from the Brits. Coincidence?
harry potter art GIFIn NJ
"Harry would probably live in New Jersey. Ron would probably live in Kentucky or Tennessee, and Hermione would probably be from California. They would go to ileverany (I spelled it wrong it's the North American wizard in school), which is in Massachusetts. There would be a train but only for people in Boston-New York-Philly-DC corridor. Everyone else would use flying cars. Outside of that it is a typical American boarding school."
- Yevin523
Travel
"Airport terminal 9 and 3 quarters."
"The kids run through a magic wall and still have to go through wizard TSA."
"Ron Weasley has to use the greyhound because he's poor but everyone else just flies."
Instead of...
"Eagles instead of Owls. Sasquatch instead of Centaurs."
"We have owls though? Eagles would be more of a flex but like, owls would still work better as they fly night and day. OK. Eagles would be an option. The useless 1 miles per gallon of gas muscle car of the owl world. Americans are super obnoxious. We suck. I get it. Sorry. Lmao."
"Too conventional. Leave it to the Wizarding World to adopt the mythical Ben Franklin's turkey idea instead. Idk how the heck that'd work as a delivery service, mind you, but still."
Relics
Happy Harry Potter GIFGiphy"The school would be a defunct military base because we don't have any incredibly old buildings, and the uniforms would be military style instead of robes. 'Murica."
Well those sound like some solid choices. Who doesn't love taco Tuesday? And why are sports always the first go to change?
Happy 5th!
Happy Birthday Dancing GIFGiphy"Taco Tuesdays at the Great Hall."
"And a freaking epic (but pointless) Cinco De Mayo party. For non Americans, it's mostly an excuse for Americans to drink on a Mexican holiday. It gets cringey. But hey, on other hand, tacos and margaritas."
Casting
"Nathan Fillion would've been cast as Guilderoy Lockhart."
"Samuel L Jackson as Mad Eye Mooney... "CONSTANT VIGILANCE, MOTHERF***ER! DO YOU KNOW IT?"
Title Cards
"They would change 'philosopher's stone' to 'sorcerer's stone'."
"The editors wanted Rowling to change the name to "Sorcerers Stone" so that the readers would know the book is about magic, and not some philosopher with a theory about a stone and sends a random guy on a mission to find it. Most people that are not American underestimates an American's brain capacity. I'm American. We are not as stupid as you think."
- Snakem69
The Drop Off
"No train ride to Hogwarts. Instead, parents will be dropping them off by car. A huge parking lot just outside Hogwarts, and instead of Diagon Alley, a large Wal-Mart exists surrounded by nothing more than another parking lot."
- cgyguy81
"It's hidden by being inside a Walmart parking lot. But when you reach the edge, almost to the building, muggles get all turned around and suddenly notice the Walmart was at the other side of the parking lot. This can repeat until the muggles either get inside a real Walmart, or go away."
- jak3rich
Commercial Gain
Flying Harry Potter GIFGiphy"This quidditch match is brought to you today on ESPN by Swiffer, the official broom of the Quidditch Cup."
"Quidditch in the old South West Conference was crazy… I remember when Texas A&M offered Eric Dickerson that gold Swiffer and he took it and rode it up to Dallas to sign his letter of intent with SMU."
- BigDrisk
Nothing here really seems necessary. It was fun to dabble in the thoughts though. Keep perfect as is.
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They say one man's trash is another man's treasure - and sometimes that saying is pretty literal.
Lots of people build entire businesses picking up cool stuff on bulk-pickup trash day, and upcycling it into something even better that people are willing to pay for.
Sometimes, you might even end up with something pristine and usable right away.
Reddit user JampackedAlborn1976 asked:
What is the most valuable item that you have seen somebody throw away or have found in the garbage?
And for real ... some of these people scored BIG TIME. Like big time. Like really big.
Like Refrigerator Big
just ask leslie jones GIF by Saturday Night Live
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"Our current refrigerator is a double-door one with exterior ice and water dispensers. We got it for free, with absolutely no problems whatsoever. It's just a few years old."
"How we got it? My dad (civil engineer) was doing some work on someone's apartment when they said they had bought a new modern French door refrigerator and that they were just going to discard their current refrigerator."
"My dad simply asked if he could have it.. and they said yes." - SauloJr
Immigrants In Action
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"I immigrated to the US from Brazil when I was 12. And every Saturday, my mom, stepdad, sister and I would go out at night to upper middle class neighborhoods the day before trash pickup to rummage through the garbage they were putting out."
"We found perfectly good TVs, VCRs, microwaves, couches, lazy boys, tables, books and comics, etc."
"I couldn't believe these Americans were throwing out like that. We furnished our entire house with that stuff. The entire Brazilian immigrant community in my town did it. We were flabbergasted." - PhillipLlerenas
With A Note
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"My wife yelled at me that someone put a big TV outside with a note on it. Walked across the street and it was a brand new Samsung 37 inch HDTV."
"They were actually renovating the apartment building and got an upgraded TV. Even had the remote taped to it with batteries, I guess I have really nice neighbors here in NYC." - MadLintElf
Life Hack!
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"If you want high end stuff out of the garbage for free, follow these steps:"
"Pick a city with a large university in it. If it's a school well known for its law programs, or medical, or engineering, all the better."
"Search for luxury apartment complexes that market themselves towards students. Look for things like included shuttle service, pools, fitness centers, etc. The more expensive and swanky the better."
"Figure out when finals week is at the end of Spring semester."
"Dumpster dive at those luxury apartment complexes during that week and the following weekend."
"Very wealthy international students will arrive in the US, fully outfit an apartment with nice furniture, big TVs, audio systems, gaming consoles, you name it, and when the semester ends they just junk it all because they aren't going to fly it back to wherever, and it's too much effort to spend the time selling when they do not care about the money."
"It's a smaller scale phenomenon a little like all the luxury cars abandoned at the airport in Dubai." - whattothewhonow
Literal Gold Treasure
valley of the boom david kim stanley GIF by National Geographic Channel
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"I found a gold coin at goodwill for 5 bucks. It was in a case with someone's name and company name."
"It was their gift from the company for retiring. I assume the family threw it out when he died not knowing it was solid gold. It was in a in a thick solid plastic case that had to be cracked opened."
"It literally said 1 oz fine gold on it. I figured 5 bucks was worth the risk it not being real."
"It was a South African KRUGERRAND 1 oz coin. Everyone was just too busy to read it lol."
"Bought it and took it too a pawn shop and sold it for a couple grand." - streetmitch
The Best Day Of My Life
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"When I was a kid, I grew up right outside the Los Angeles area in the suburbs. My stepdad was a garbage truck driver for the city of Beverly Hills."
"I swear in the late 80s and early 90s we'd have so much basically brand new stuff (still in boxes) brought home on a regular basis."
"I'll never forget one day in particular. My stepdad came home and was like 'get ready, come to the car, I'll need your help.' So I go down there and in back seat of his car he had a few large black garbage bags."
"We haul them up to our apartment and he's like 'go ahead, open them.' Inside was what I could only describe as an 80s kids trove of treasures."
"One bag contained just about every Ghostbusters and GI joe toy you can imagine, they were played with but had every little accessory, there was a bunch the playsets and everything."
"In the other bag was pretty much every LEGO of the early 80s sets, still in their original boxes. I was a big LEGO nerd but was totally thrown off by the old school space ones because they looked nothing like the 90s space sets. I think they even said "NASA" the minifig's chests."
"That was like a random day in July, it felt like Christmas. I was 9 years old and it was basically like the best day of my life up to that point." - Zombgief
Who Throws Away Money?
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"A jar full of quarters."
"Annual spring cleaning projects happen in a lot of towns where anyone can put almost anything on the curb and it's taken away for free. It's to stop open dumping or stuff being dumped in ditches."
"Sometimes people deal with estates from winter by just dumping all their grandfather's stuff on the curb for the cleanup to get the house empty immediately. Most often they don't even bother to look at what they are throwing away."
"In 2012 on north road in Akwesasne I found an estate pile that I shuttled back and forth with my bike trailer getting lots of older tools like a scythe, hammers, saws, screwdrivers and wrenches, a 22 rifle with 100 round of ammo, a bunch of ar15 magazines, cast iron cookware, oil lamps, a hand crank food mill with all kinds of accessories, a black raven axe head (worth $100 easily since they are a collectable), and a quart size mason jar full of change mostly quarters."
"That was spring and the sheriffs office did a gun buyback in the fall where I took the mags and got $20 each for them (30 round mags suddenly illegal under the safe act of fall 2012. The buyback was a local political move). I still got the 22 and picked off a lot of woodchuck with it in my gardens." - Bogtrotterso1980
Filing Fever
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"I own a small company which is located directly in front of a state funded program facility. The state decided to have this office shred all of their files as they were going to switch to electronic data (exclusively)."
"We found two of these old rotary filing cabinets outside of their office. They're worth almost $3k each!"
"They just placed them there and we saw them and asked what they planned on doing with them. They said, 'Hmmm.....either donate them or trash them.' The state told them simply to get rid of them."
"We jumped at this and took the two into our already tiny office because there was no way in hell that we were going to let these gems go. (We do use paper files, unfortunately)."
"They wanted to give us two smaller ones but seriously, our office is very small. I made some phone calls and they were picked up immediately by other office workers/friends." - GlitzBlitz
This Sucks - In A Good Way!
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"In the 1990s my moms work had a really nice high end Hoover that stopped working. They threw it out."
"My mom took it home because my dad tinkers and repairs things easily. Turns out since it was a bagged vacuum all the dummies had to do is REPLACE THE BAG."
"Like it never occurred to them to do the most easy and basic step. My parents were excited to have a really upgraded vacuum. Maybe like $500ish." - schweddyboobs
Tiffany's Trash
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"My dad found an old stained glass window laying out by someone's trash. He thought it would look cool hanging in our cabin, so he stopped and grabbed it."
"It sat in our garage for a few years before he looked at it more closely and found "Tiffany and Co." branding on it. He got in touch with some stained glass window dude who figured it was worth about $40k fully restored, so my dad sold it to him for somewhere around $30k." - throwaway_stopdrink
Have you had any awesomely trashtastic treasures? Let us know!