I ran across this quote from Minnesota radio personality Garrison Keillor.

By way of disclaimer, I know nothing about this man, other than what I just read in a quick Google search. I can’t vouch for his website, his radio show, or his books.

But this quote is especially poignant.

The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, Daddy, I need to ask you something, he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.

I have found this to be true in my relationships with my kids. And I think it’s a pretty universal fact. Fathers parent their sons differently than they do their daughters.

We train our boys to become men. We expect more different things from them than we do our daughters. We fiercely protect our little girls, no matter what their age.

Let me give you an example of that from our family.  We don’t permit our daughters to date until they are 16 years old. But I have allowed my son to pursue a girlfriend at age 14. Here is my reasoning to this difference.  As a father of a daughter, my role is to be a protector of her heart.  My role as a father of a son is to teach him to be a protector of hearts.  I think that must start at a very early age, and as a result of that, I have a difference between the ages at which my kids can date.

Do we love either or sons or daughters more or less than the other? Of course not. We just express it differently.

My prayer is that God continues to melt my heart when it comes to my daughters. And that he does so with my sons as well.

Question: What do your children do that melts your heart? You can leave a comment by clicking here.