I wanted a girl. When the ultrasound confirmed it, I was elated. Her name is Felicity and she’s arriving in June.

My brother has two daughters, one who’s two months older than Benedict and another who just turned one. Admittedly I feel jealous when I see how his girls are just completely in love with him. They gravitate towards him, want to be held by him, and want him to play with them. They are totally obsessed with their father.

The relationship between a father and a daughter is incredibly powerful. A strong relationship with her father results in a woman with high self-esteem. A real expert in this field is the renowned Dr. Meg Meeker, a Traverse City based pediatrician who has written extensively on the subject.

All children need a stable home, loving parents, and to have their emotional needs met. It’s especially important for fathers to pursue their daughter’s hearts, to teach them how to love, and to show them that they are loved. When you look at these emotional needs, they have a common thread. The need for a strong sense of self-respect and self-worth in order to live well adjusted lives. These foundations are first built and later reinforced within the context of the parental relationship. Girls innately gravitate towards their fathers to be affirmed and to learn how to love, meaning that as fathers, it’s up to us to help them in this critical area of growth.

Fathers carry the special responsibility of pursuing their daughter’s heart. That turn of phrase is one that I heard frequently while I was studying at Franciscan University of Steubenville. What was an annoyance then has clarity now. Pursuit of your daughter’s heart is about being intentional about expressing the feelings and emotions that you have about her in a tangible way. As men, we tend to be reserved in expressing soft emotions. Our communication style uses fewer words than women and we use signals to express our approval and acceptance of others. Pursuing your daughter’s heart is recognizing that it’s not enough for her that you feel emotions of love internally: they must be externalized.

I was recently at a dinner with Alison’s colleagues. It was around Valentine’s Day and one of the young ladies shared her father’s tradition of giving a Valentine’s Day gift to his daughters until they got married. This particular young lady, a working professional, is still single and related the extremely heartfelt and thoughtful gift that she had recently received to mark this year’s Valentine’s Day. Her father gets it. Make sure she knows that she’s loved and communicate it in ways that she understands.

In order to truly love one’s daughter, it’s important to model a good marriage. We should first look to how we treat our wives and the courtesies that we show to them because our children are always watching. Daughters in a particular way keenly observe the dynamics of the domestic life. Your marriage is the primary relationship in your family from which all other relationships flow. Make sure you’re working hard to have a great one.

Teach your daughters to love, show them that they have dignity and worth, and give them the foundation that they need to life a healthy and well-adjusted life. While you’re at it, teach your sons to reject the idea that women at their disposal. Boys and girls who are given a model of family, marriage, and love will carry those lesson into their own lives and pass them down to their children’s children.

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It’s likely that after years of dating and marriage, your wife understands you and can intuit that you love her in the times in between displays of affection or tokens of love. Your daughter doesn’t have the benefit of that experience with you, so those times when you’re not expression external emotions or giving her tokens of love, she can discern no sense of love, thus leading to confusion.

Never let your daughter think for a minute that you don’t love her.

This by no means should be taken as weakness or that boys are more self-reliant. Instead, it should be appreciated within the scheme of the grand design. Girls innately understand that they need to learn how to love and they gravitate towards their father for these lessons.

How you express your feelings of approval and love is how your daughter will grow emotional and feel secure. It’s from this place of safety that she can define who she is, answer life’s biggest questions, and learn to process healthy emotions. From this place she’ll learn how to live an integrated life and make excellent life choices.

Fathers must give their daughters special attention because of the gravity of the consequences. If your daughter leaves your house at the age of 18 with a poor sense of self-worth, she’s going to try to find it somewhere else, and typically that’s in the form of substance abuse or abusive relationships. She’ll get into relationships with deadbeats because they display the model of love that was given to her. Your daughter is worth so much more than that.