Calling Your Daughter “Dorkface” and the Need For Therapists

Earlier this week, the Morning Rush on B98.5 in Central Arkansas (listen live here) did a segment on nicknames that you have for your kids or a nickname that you had as a kid.  As some of you may know, I am prone to texting in to this radio program on occasion.  I like saying funny things and then people hear them.  (That’s one of the main reasons I blog)  Well, I texted in some of the numerous nicknames that I have for my girls:

Maylee: Pip, Pipperpants, Sissy. Lauren: Lou, Squeak, Gooberfish, Dorkface.

As this was read on the air, the host comments, “Well, there’s a couple of dollars into the therapist’s jar.”  It was especially funny to me that she would say that, since I talk about my girls’ future therapists all the time.  Just last week I said, “When you are talking to your therapist in the future, try to remember that I sat and watched an iCarly movie with you.”  I even referenced my girls’ future need for a therapist on cloften.com last week here. 

Anywho, what kind of dad would call his daughter Dorkface?  Aren’t you legitimately setting her up for a therapist?  Here’s the thing, though.  She is a dork.  So am I.  She wears that nickname as a badge of honor.  She doesn’t want to be “regular.”  She never has (good thing too).  We are dorks together, being who we are.  She’s not what a little girl is “supposed to be,” and her dad is not a “regular pastor.”  We are not trying to be rebels and be different for different sake.  We are just being who God has uniquely designed us to be.

Sometimes it is hard to embrace different in your child.  Often when that baby girl or baby boy comes out, we can close our eyes and imagine what he or she is going to be.  We map their lives out.  If we had such a plan with either of our girls, they shattered them many, many years ago.  We strongly believe that God designed our two precious girls and that he has a great plan for them to be used by him for their whole lives.  Our role is to help shape their values, character, point them to God, and then someday get out of the way and watch God use them to change the world.  One of them plans to be an actress/boutique owner and the other a cake designer/comedienne.  Well, ok then.

Am I messing my kids up and giving them fodder for future therapists? Sure, we all are.  But it is not from embracing my girls in how they are different, loving who they are, and being good enough friends with them to tease them. 

Loving my little Dorkface is reducing that bill not adding to it.  Now, you call her that, and I might take you out.  Don’t make me get all “Papa Bear” on you.  That’s my nickname, BTW.