Module 7 · Strength and Tenderness · Lesson 2 of 2
What they learn about love from you
Your daughter is learning what to accept. Your son is learning what to become. Both are learning from you.
Module 7 of 12
By the end of this lesson
- Say separately what your son and your daughter are each learning from you
- Name one behavior of yours they are likely to repeat at twenty five
- Do one thing in front of them that shows what they should expect
Whatever love looks like in your house is the definition your child will carry out of it, and they will not know they are carrying it.
If it looks like tension and reconciliation, they will seek intensity. If it looks like a man who provides and does not speak, they will marry silence. If it looks like walking on eggshells, calm will feel like something is wrong.
This is why the pattern repeats across generations without anybody choosing it. Nobody is choosing. They are recognizing, and recognition feels like love.
She is deciding what a man is and what she can expect from one, and she is doing it now, at whatever age she is.
How you speak to her mother, whether or not you are together. How you speak to her. Whether her presence changes your face when she walks into a room.
Every man she meets later will be measured against a standard you set without ever saying a word about it.
If she has to earn your attention, she will look for men whose attention must be earned, and she will call that chemistry.
He is not listening to your advice. He is rehearsing your behavior, and he will run it later without recalling where it came from.
How you handle being disrespected. What you do when you are frightened. Whether you apologize. What you do with your hands when you are angry.
This is why telling him to treat women well does not work if he watches you do otherwise. He is not taking instruction. He is taking imprint.
The only thing you can teach him about being a man is what he watches you be.
Both of those are true and men usually only believe one.
Children re-evaluate their parents constantly. A father who changes in a way that holds does get re-read, and the years before it are not erased, but they stop being the whole story.
It has to hold, though. A change that lasts six weeks teaches them that hope is dangerous, and that is worse than no change at all.
So do not announce it. Do not promise them a new father. Just start, quietly, and let them notice, because noticing is worth more than being told.
They are taking notes and they do not know they are taking notes.
The workEight questions
Three are answered in your head and never collected. They are marked, so you know before you start which is which.
What does love look like in your house? Describe it as your child would if they had the words.
Who did you learn that from?
What is your daughter learning to accept from men?
- AThat she has to earn attention
- BThat men go quiet when things get hard
- CThat love comes with an edge to it
- DThat a man can be relied on, because that is what she sees
Write what your son is rehearsing right now, based on the last month of watching you.
What are you doing that you would not want him to do?
How do you speak about their mother when they can hear?
- AWith respect, whatever I feel
- BNeutrally, mostly, and I slip sometimes
- CBadly, and I know they hear it
- DI do not speak about her at all, which they also notice
A change that lasts six weeks teaches them hope is dangerous. Write what you can actually sustain, and nothing more.
Do not announce it. Write what you are starting quietly this week and letting them notice.
DeeperThree reflections
Longer than the questions and harder. Nobody reads these but you. Write them anyway, because the ones you would not say out loud are the ones doing the damage.
- 1
Write about the first definition of love you were given, and how much of it you are still running.
- 2
Write what you want your daughter to refuse to accept from a man, and then ask whether you are modelling the refusal or the acceptance.
- 3
Write about the last time you announced a change to your child and did not hold it. What did they do afterward.
Hold this
He tends his flock like a shepherd, gathers the lambs in his arms, and gently leads the ones that have young. Read the last part again. God moves at the pace of the ones carrying children.
Isaiah 40:11
Before you close this
They are taking notes and they do not know they are taking notes
Your daughter is deciding what a man is allowed to say to her. Your son is deciding what a man says when he is angry. Neither of them is aware of it, and neither will be able to tell you later where they learned it.
You are writing that either way. The only question is whether you write it on purpose this week or let it get written by whatever kind of week you happen to have.
Do one thing in front of your child that shows them what you want them to expect. Speak well of their mother in their hearing, or apologize where they can see it, or say the words you were never told. Once, where they can see it. That is the whole assignment.
Written for fathers who are still fighting.
Legacy · Module 7.2