I’m a father of daughters.
I love my girls so very much more than I might have ever imagined possible, and I wouldn’t trade them for boys or for anything. They amaze me every day. They are brilliant and witty and entertaining and wise beyond their years. They are kind, loving and gentle souls. They are beautiful, like their mother.
However, they are girls. And one of the peculiarities of being a father of daughters is that every one of us who is a father of daughters was once a teenage male. (Truth: Some fathers of daughters are teenage males. Hopefully, after you all read this, that will happen less often.) My brain still spends an annoying amount of time in its late teens and early twenties. This is unfortunate, but, in my case, fortunately not dangerous. And it does help me as a parent of teenage daughters.
Here are my two short speeches to my daughters and one for me and for you as a parent. Here’s the essence of growing up, boiled down as far as I can boil it down. I think they’re equally applicable to boys as well. I’ll happily extrapolate further down. Brevity is not my gift.)
First, when my daughters were too young to understand, I told them this: “I hope this never happens, but at some point in your life you may be in an uncomfortable position with a boy. When this happens, go for the knees or the balls. Injure him if necessary, but get yourself free. You can deal with the fallout later. Again, I hope it never happens, but I don’t want you to think about it if it does. You need to act. Boys sometimes can’t reason out what’s best for you or for them or for the both of you. I’m sorry. I know this is yucky, but please believe me.” This, of course, at first, prompted only running away and, “Dad! Yecch!” But it also prompted some discussion. I don’t think it made them fearful of boys. (I’ve busted both of them making out in my own house….) And I don’t think either of them has had to bust a guy in the nuts to escape a bad situation. But, I think it’s made them wary.
My more important societal contribution has been my “1-2-3-4” speech. It goes like this: "In life you get choices. When faced with a choice, ask yourself, what are the chances, if I do this, I'll end up dead, pregnant, in jail, or embarrassing my family? If the chances are good of any one of those, get yourself out of there. If the chances are basically nil of all four, have a great time!"
Simple, right? I hold up the fingers and count when I give the spiel: 1. Dead. 2. Pregnant. 3. Jail. 4. Embarrassing my family.
I’ve shared this with so many friends. I’ve told it at dinner tables and school functions. People say all the time, “What is it?” Dead, pregnant, in jail, shame on the family name.” When my girls go out now, I just hold up my hand and count silently with my fingers: 1, 2, 3, 4. The girls know. They do it jokingly with my lovely wife and me when we go out. We’ll be backing out of the garage and they’ll be standing in the doorway: 1, 2, 3, 4, wry grins on their faces. I hope it hasn’t become just a cliche to them. Even though it’s sort of over-used in our family, I don’t think it’s a cliche at all.
See, our kids don’t readily understand that everything we do in life is a choice, and every choice has consequences. You have to be willing to live with the consequences, potential or realized, of every choice you make. This is a topic for another time, but I’ve also always told the kids that they always have a choice. They can skip their meal, but they won’t be treat eligible. They can skip school, but they won’t have as many great college choices. They can not pay taxes. They’ll probably go to jail if they don’t, but they don’t have to pay those taxes.
And some choices have much bigger, much more dramatic consequences than others. Sex, as we all know, has big potential consequences. You need to be ready to deal with those consequences, and/or the relevant prevention (which isn’t as we all know, foolproof, and foolproof becomes much harder when teenage males are involved, doesn’t it?!) before you jump in. So, thinking you’re ready may not mean you’re ready. But you’ve still got to make a choice.
My lovely wife is a trauma nurse, so we had the benefit of sharing with our kids what happens when you do stupid things behind the wheel of a vehicle or when you literally play with fire. Our older daughter had a dramatic fear of fireworks in her younger years, in part from seeing some burned kids my lovely wife helped in the course of her work. That’s why dead is first. It’s all encompassing, and, as a parent, it’s our greatest fear, isn’t? I am so much less afraid of dying myself than I am of losing one of my girls. It rends my heart just to think that it’s possible. I have to prevent that if I can.
Don’t get dead. Don’t drive if you drink. Don’t drive if you’re distracted or tired. Don’t get in a car with people who are drunk, distracted, tired…. Call me. I’ll get you. No questions asked.
I saved a voicemail from one of my girls. My lovely wife and I were at an event separate from our kids, and my younger daughter called. Some kids were getting a little out of hand, drinking at a party she was attending. She called to ask if she could leave and could drive a couple of other kids back to our house where they could establish their own, alcohol free party. Yes. Yes. Yes. Dios mio, Si, y gracias!
Don’t get dead. Don’t get pregnant.
Our oldest came home from her first day of high school freshman biology with a short essay question. “Why should I take high school biology?” She asked me what I thought. This was during the heat of the 2008 presidential campaign. I said, “I have two words for you, honey. Bristol Palin.” You’ll recall that Ms. Palin, daughter of then vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, was pregnant at 17. This was not a political statement or a moral invective about Ms. Palin. I simply wanted to make the point that Ms. Palin either didn’t understand the biology of baby-making at her young age, or she did understand it, but made the choice to proceed dangerously, and that choice was dramatically changing her life. Adorable Daughter #1 repeated the “two words” part in class the next day. Her teacher burst out laughing. (Again - not a political statement, people! We live in a safely Republcan district!) The kids in the class didn’t get it. Fortunately for me, that her classmates didn’t understand only served to reinforce the point for AD#1.
Having kids is awesome. It’s been the second greatest thing in my life. But having kids changes your life completely. You lose freedom. You gain a lot, but you also gain a lot of responsibility. You have to be ready for that. Are you?
This, by the way, applies equally to boys and girls. Whether we have boys or girls, I’m sure we want to teach them to be responsible for their actions. If a boy does what’s required to get a girl pregnant, he needs to know he’s responsible, needs to share that responsibility equally. In that sense, I’d have used the same 1-2-3-4 if I had boys, too.
Don’t get dead, pregnant, or in jail.
Look, there are respectable reasons to end up in jail. Many great people - the Apostle Paul, Gandhi, Martin Luther King - have shown us that. There are also stupid reasons, and you don’t want to go to jail for stupid reasons, because that stuff sticks with you. It changes your outcomes, your prospects, and your opportunities. You have to mention those things to colleges and employers, because if they find out and you haven’t mentioned it, they just wave goodbye. They no longer give you a chance.
For us “jail” has really meant “don’t break the law.” We’re supposed to play by the rules. In order for our society to work - for all of us to get along, we have these laws. Some keep us safe. Some may be a little unnecessary, but they’re the law, and we follow the law. We treat officers and our military and our elders with respect, and we follow the rules.
Don’t get dead pregnant or in jail. And don’t embarrass your family.
My grandmother always said, “Don’t bring shame on the family name.” Now, I have a tendency to be boisterous and goofy. I’ve probably singlehandedly embarrassed my daughters in more ways than I can recall, but I haven’t done it in a way that would see us ostracized from our community. That said, we’ve never defined precisely what our #4 means. We just trust each other not to do it. The girls know that ending up in jail would be embarrassing, or being delivered to our house in a squad car, or getting called into the principal’s office because of something stupid, or sexting, or any of a myriad of other things. So little is hidden these days, thanks to the intarwebs. It takes effort not to end up having something dreadful on the internet about yourself or your family. It takes not doing stuff that embarrasses your family!
1-2-3-4. "In life you get choices. When faced with a choice, ask yourself, what are the chances, if I do this, I'll end up dead, pregnant, in jail, or embarrassing my family. If the chances are good of any one of those, get yourself out of there. If the chances are basically nil of all four, have a great time!"
Try it. It works. Then, when your kids turn out great, send me a couple bucks or a free beer coupon or just a note to say thanks. That’s plenty. That, plus our society getting better.
Here’s the other piece my wife and I adopted, simply put: I guess I call it the parents' corollary: "Trust your children until they give you reason not to. Tell them you are doing this. This will require you to allow them to do things that frighten you."
We talk about what Stephen Covey called the “emotional bank account.” (http://weekplan.net/watch-s-covey-speak-about-the-concept-of-emotional-bank-account/) Basically trust in relationships accumulates as we trust our kids to do the right thing, and they do. We said to our girls, “We’re a little uncomfortable about this, but you haven’t given us a reason not to trust you, so we’re going to let you go. Here are the parameters. Be careful. Have fun. 1-2-3-4.” Fortunately, that has worked beautifully. Now, if they violate your trust, you have to have consequences. If they come home late, we say, “Sorry, we trusted you to be home on time and you weren’t. You can’t go next time, and the time after that, you’ll have to be home earlier. When you show us again we can trust you, we will.”
We really have made a point of talking to our kids. Yes, we tend to do it in a lighthearted manner, but with a force and a frequency that lets them know how important this is to us. I think, my greatest fear is the thought of one of my girls dying. My second greatest fear, I think, is the thought of one of my girls having to live with the consequences of someone else being permanently hurt or dead. And my third is for them to have their lives altered in a dramatic and limiting way.
Funny thing about this is that it all stems from my memory of being a teenage boy and the resultant worry about how my girls would deal with teenage boys. I want them to know that I worry, and about what, boiled down to a tiny, memorable list. They won't know how much I worry until they have children of their own.
Thanks for listening. Love & peace.
(These thoughts were spoken and written about starting in perhaps 2000 and edited many times since.)
