Dear Prudie,
My daughter is 5 years old and has, like most girls her age, a hamper's worth of stuffed animals. While she has her favorites, she constantly wants more and usually connives to get someone (read: her grandparents) into procuring a new one every couple of weeks. The new one immediately becomes her favorite and she must sleep with it every night and haul it around half the day. My question is: Does this behavior indicate she'll be overly promiscuous as an adult, or at least unable to commit to a single partner?

-Perhaps Overly Worried Father

Dear

One of the signs of a small child having low self-esteem is over-achieving. Perhaps collecting toys and transferring her affection to the toys is a symptom that your kid is not getting the reassurance and love she needs from you. She is filling the hole of her inadequacy with toys from the people who love her unconditionally, her grandparents.

Instead of bitching and worrying, maybe you should tell your kid she is good enough, that you're glad she was born and that you love her. Kids that turn into teens with low self-esteem and no fatherly reinforcement of how loved they are, do turn to promiscuity to fill the void. They also turn to addiction and self-destructive behaviors too.

Somewhere, years ago, I read that a two year old little girl given the choice between playing with her mommy or her daddy would choose her daddy 90 percent of the time. Daughters who do not get a good example of how to be loved by men, won't know good from bad loving. If they cannot tell the difference, they may start trying to compensate with a greater variety of partners.

Maybe this is about her grandparents buying her too many toys. Maybe it's about your self-esteem. Maybe this really is about you knowing you're not a very good dad. Maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. It can't be any worse that Prudie's reply. Good luck.

Hi Pbev…

I think you raise an interesting point—it’s hard to tell from the letter, but I do know that small children thrive (or not) based in large part on the amount of unconditional affection they get. I know that when we do have to discipline Charley with a time out or talk to him about something that he’s not allowed to do (like teasing the dog or climbing up on a piece of furniture that could be dangerous) we have to literally make him look us in the eye because he so powerfully dislikes disappointing anyone. He gets tons and tons of affection so a reaction that is even a gentle chastisement is perturbing to him. It’s also somewhat true that little boys cling to their mothers and (so I’m told) little girls favor their fathers (I guess I’ll find out soon enough—the coming twins are girls ;)

I think your point about security and knowing warm, giving and good love, from needy and painful, the kind that hurts begins at home and how we model that. Interesting point.

And while I have no indication the LW is disaffected the importance attached to an affection for dolls and indulgent grandparents has me more concerned about over protective parenting ;)

Demosthenes2:

I think your point about security and knowing warm, giving and good love, from needy and painful, the kind that hurts begins at home and how we model that. Interesting point.

Hiya Demosthenes,

I respect your ability to sum up what I'm thinking in a fraction of the words, while I struggle along for paragraphs. Daughters need the love and support of their daddies to turn out well adjusted. Little girls get their self-esteem from their daddies.

I have no doubt you'll be a magnificent daddy to your daughters when they get here. Charley is a lucky boy, sisters are a wonderful gift.

When is Ann due?

I hope this guy learns his lesson and doesn't spend all his time haranguing his little girl about stuff like that as she grows up, making her feel like crap. Maybe he should be more worried about that, and encouraging her, making her feel loved and valued.

I feel the main point of my post was to emphasize promiscuity is directly related to her father and how he enhances her self esteem from a young age AND less to do with how many stuff toys she gathers in her bed.

Fathers have one job and one job only. Keep your daughter from becoming a stripper. If you do, you win. If you don't, you lose...and so does she.

You stole that line from Chris Rock. He used that one in his comedy routine about 5 years ago.

"Daughters need the love and support of their daddies to turn out well adjusted. Little girls get their self-esteem from their daddies. "

This is completely untrue. If it were, thousands of us raised without a father in sight would be mal-adjusted. Little girls 'get their self-esteem' from the same place little boys do, good parenting that fosters their sense of self and independence. And that can come from their mother, grandmother, aunt, uncle etc. Thankfully, it doesn't only come from fathers.

Daddies are the people in a girl's life that can most easily destroy her self-esteem and affect both the choice and the success of her future relatioships.

This includes both the ones that aren't there and the ones we wish weren't there.

There's a song out now about fathers being good to their daughters. It really makes a lot of sense. My younger daughter was loved unconditionally by her step-father, and cannot remember her natural father. She is one of the most loving people I know, and many of my friends have said so, as well. Her older sister does remember their natural father, and still has trust issues.

PoliSci Guy:

I hope this guy learns his lesson and doesn't spend all his time haranguing his little girl about stuff like that as she grows up, making her feel like crap.

You mean stuff like, "You have way too many stuffed animals! What's wrong with the ones you already have? Can't you just settle on something for once?"

"Daughters need the love and support of their daddies to turn out well adjusted. Little girls get their self-esteem from their daddies. "

apropos1:

This is completely untrue.

Respectfully, it is true. I write from first hand experience. All children need guidance, love and a supportive environment and in an idealistic world, it wouldn't matter if the contributors were all women.

But the boundaries little girls learn and their levels of self-esteem are dependent on good fatherly role models. If you turned out fine without a father, bully for you. I know many, MANY women who were not so lucky.

The point of this whole thread was for the worried father to examine his own role in nurturing his daughter's self-esteem because it plays a greater role in her future promiscuity than her quantity of stuffed toys and how she plays with them.

IncogNeato - Daughters are a gift. I am glad your's had a good role model, better late than never. I love this song.

FATHER and DAUGHTER Lyrics

By Paul Simon

If you leap awake in the mirror of a bad dream
And for a fraction of a second you can't remember where you are
Just open your window and follow your memory upstream
To the meadow in the mountain where we counted every falling star

I believe a light that shines on you will shine on you forever
And though I can't guarantee there's nothing scary hiding under your bed
I'm gonna stand guard like a postcard of a Golden Retriever
And never leave 'til I leave you with a sweet dream in your head

[Chorus:]
I'm gonna watch you shine
Gonna watch you grow
Gonna paint a sign
So you'll always know
As long as one and one is two
There could never be a father
Who loved his daughter more than I love you

Trust your intuition
It's just like goin' fishin'
You cast your line and hope you get a bite
But you don't need to waste your time
Worryin' about the market place
Try to help the human race
Struggling to survive its harshest night

[Chorus 2x]

I was beginning to wonder if I'd gone completely mad.

Ideally, boys need a good male role model, too. Sadly, it doesn't always happen.

I question why the father immediately leaps to the idea that his daughter's behavior indicates eventual sexual promiscuity. Granted, I don't have all the background information here. Perhaps there are other things going on that make this father seize on a sexual interpretation, but based on the information here, it seems completely outlandish to me.

IMHO, I think that her determination to amass a collection of possessions predicts nothing about her eventual relationships with people as a grownup. However, if she is permitted to continue "conniving" to get her grandparents to bring her new toys all the time, she will learn to equate love with material objects and outlays of money, and she will believe it to be acceptable to expect and demand that others buy her things that she wants. That seems to me to be the real issue here.