What you're doing is really disrespectful to my daughter.

And your job is to be a protector.

Hey, guys, welcome to the Five Minute Fatherhood podcast.

I'm your co-host, Jeff Bethke, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor.

Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay

tuned.

What's up guys? Jeff and Jeremy here. Another episode of Five Minute Fatherhood. This one comes

from our Facebook group. If you're not in the Five Minute Fatherhood Facebook group, I believe there's a link in the YouTube video below or the audio podcast below. I think we have over a thousand fathers in there just sharpening each other, asking questions. And one of these was a good one. And it was a father who kind of had to deal with a tough problem and totally understand where he basically said, how do you deal with a boy calling your daughter names? I think in this instance, it was actually him, the boy calling his daughter a B word. So it's very serious. And he said, you can't just beat in his head because you could go to jail because he is underage, which that is true. And I'm very glad you didn't do that. But this is, But I think this is a larger question, Jeremy, and I love this question.

Essentially, when, kind of like when, but, but, but I think this is a larger question, Jeremy, of, and I love this question. Um, essentially when, kind of like, when do you know when to step in? When do you know not when to step in? What do you do, especially as a father to a daughter when there's kind of a disrespect or something thrown towards her, age different levels, appropriate different levels, them kind of, you know, being able to handle it, not handle it. There's a lot of different layers here. But I think in general, let's say, let's consider maybe the option or this situation that's a little bit more like serious enough where obviously I think a parent needs to, if a parent sees that, a parent needs to say something. Now, I'd love to hear your thoughts, Jeremy, but my thoughts are, yeah, I will say I don't like and I'm naturally repelled by the classic like dad with a gun when you're dating that type of thing. I really don't like that. That image, right? And I don't like that, that vision of a father that's kind of the classic American dad, you know, that it's kind of like a joke at this point, right? If you want to come over and date my daughter, then there's like a gun and you know, and that's seen from bad boys, I think, with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. But, but I think there's a, there's a sliver of truth there, of we are in charge of, of provision and protection for all of our children. And we are the front gate. We are the gatekeepers. That's really important. But I think that has to be coupled with like, what does it mean to be a father in the

kingdom, right? And the father of the kingdom is a father who is like, is Jesus, right? Who is completely

firm, who taught, who wasn't just some flimsy hippie, but actually talked about hell and judgment more than anywhere else in the scriptures, which I always find fascinating when people want to talk about Jesus and his love, which is so true, but he actually literally proportionally talked about hell and judgment more than anyone else in the scriptures. So he has that true about him, yet he looks in people's eyes and says, hey, you're forgiven, you're new. That's not who you are, right? You're loved. There's grace and that's broken in this moment of what you deserve, but what I did, what I gave you instead was a gift and a blessing. So I think holding those two as the father is really important. And that's a hard, hard thing to do unless you're being very spirit-led in that

moment. But I think that's really important. That's just the first thing I would say, I don't know, how would you kind of answer this or talk about this? Yeah, I think the three options that generally you see is on one hand, if some boy is attacking, let's say, your 13-year-old daughter, right? just calling your names, verbally abusive. On one hand, there's sort of a

cultural thing, you know, trope that Jeff, you were describing of like, go beat him up or something,

right? Sort of an old school version. There's another one that's really growing in our culture,

which is, hey, just let your daughter grow up. This is the world. She's got to have the emotional

health to deal with, you know, boys and girls and, you know, other problems and stay out of it, totally. And there's really a third option, and this is what was so fun in the Facebook group, because this guy, Stephen, jumped in and said, hey, my 13-year-old daughter was being, you know, really verbally abused by a boy in her in a sports

context. And he said, I just walked up to the boy and I didn't beat him up, I didn't threaten him.

I just said, hey, I just want you to know, like, you know, what you're doing is really disrespectful to my daughter.

And your job is to be a protector. Like, he called this boy's identity over him and said, that's your job is to protect these

girls.

And he said the boy was super freaked out and just lots of yes sirs, yes sir, yes sir, which is

awesome.

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