Dad - on protecting our children

If you haven’t guessed yet, I love music. A lot of the things I can’t get straight in my head seem to be spoken almost straight to me through music. While my kid and I were coming home from playing at a water park yesterday, this song came up on my mp3 player.

Paul Simon – Father and Daughter -


The lyric in particular that got me thinking were as follows:
And though I can't guarantee
There's nothing scary hiding under your bed
I’m gonna stand guard
Like a postcard of a Golden Retriever
And never leave till I leave you
With a sweet dream in your head

As fathers, I think protection of our children is usually on the tip of our brains. I think this is because we know the truth. No matter how tough you are, the simple (and terrifying) truth is that we can’t always keep bad things from happening. So how do you prepare your kids for handling problems while not frightening them?

I believe that children need to be prepared for the fact that life isn’t always fair, bad things happen, good people get hurt sometimes and people we love can be mean to us. That being said, I think it is equally important that they know they will be able to handle any of those bad things and if they can’t we will take over and fight until they tell us to stop.

I remember my daughter asking a very serious question when she was younger. You could tell even at her early age that the matter had been weighing on her mind. She waited for a quiet hush in the car and jumped in with “Dad, What would happen if I was in school and a boy was hitting me?”

I suppressed the urge to tell her I would kick his butt and instead told her that no one has the right to hit her, she would tell him to stop and if he didn’t she would get away from him quickly and tell someone she trusts like the teacher. She asked “what if he won’t let me tell the teacher” and I resisted another urge regarding my hospitalizing this imaginary boy. I replied that we do everything we can without violence but if she couldn’t get away from him she would kick him in the ‘boy parts’ and run to the teacher. (she giggled, already relaxing)

Then came “what if the teacher didn’t do anything?”. At this point, this boy’s life was in serious jeopardy.. I told her that Dad will have already been involved since day one but if the teacher didn’t help then I would step in and it would definitely stop. (no sense describing what I would do to this poor boy).

I know my daughter was happy that big strong dad would jump in at a moments notice but I can tell now that what made a more long-term impact was telling her what SHE could do to solve the problem.

To me, that really grabs the meaning of those lyrics listed above and the long-term benefits are what we are really after. When she is an adult, I want her to be free to solve her own problems with the trust that I am standing guard and ready to unlease hell on whatever causes her pain.


I love you honey..
I'm gonna watch you shine
Gonna watch you grow
Gonna paint a sign
So you'll always know
As long as one and one is two
There could never be a father
Who loved his daughter more than I love you