Involve You Daughters

Have you ever remodeled your home or maybe just done some simple re-decorations like painting a room or changing the curtain rod from that cheap ugly white metal thing to the beautiful cast-iron looking spiral thing? I know I have or at least I have helped others do this time and time again.

I grew up a marine’s daughter, but that marine was also a farmer boy and a carpenter. So before I was too old, even though I was a girl, I knew the proper way to swing a hammer, how a level worked, and many other household things that are typically left in a man’s hands.

However, it is important that our daughter know some of these simple tasks too. I have had friends in the past who didn’t know the difference between a Phillips and a flat-head screwdriver before, and for me, this was common knowledge in my house. I remember I was helping one of my boyfriends with a remodel he was doing on his house and he said “This would be so much easier if we had a crow’s foot” and at that moment in time it dawned on me that I had one in my crate of tools and brought it out. I had stumped him not only because I knew what he was talking about but because I owned a tool and he didn’t.

This is why it is important to not only teach our sons what you might call male things, but it is also important to teach our daughters those things as well. I remember having some single female friends when I was younger who always thought I was crazy because I always carried a small tool pouch with me wherever I would go. It pretty much just stayed in my car…or pickup…and it had the basics in it. My hammer, a screwdriver, a pocket level, and of course nails and screws. However, whenever they need help with something that was considered a man’s project and didn’t have boyfriends to help them, they would call me because they didn’t know what they were doing.

I asked a friend one time why they never bother to get some of these basic tools and the response I got floored me. She had said “Why do I need them?” Why, indeed, since I am over here with mine doing something you could have been doing had you had the tool to do it and some simple knowledge. I think we are so busy preparing our children for things like school, college, and the business world at large that we forget that there are other parts about life that you just don’t learn at any of these place. Like how to use a snake to unclog a drain, a really simple task, it seems that most people don’t know how to do this. They just call a plumber.

Granted, some boys probably never learn these things either, but I know girls are the worst at it because they just expect or think that a guy will always be around to do it for them, and they still have the mindset that those tasks are for the men. So I beg you to please, when remodeling your home or when doing a DIY project, get your daughters involved in them, make them a part of what it is you are doing so that they can learn and grow. That way, someday when they buy a house or move into an apartment for the first time, they know how to take care of the house without getting that feeling of being overwhelmed by the unknowns of what to do when.