What happens between a Father and a Daughter is shaped by many strange and mysterious forces. Pain and despair can sometimes come on us almost instantly. Fortunately, it works the other way, too. Sometimes the smallest adjustments have the ability to hugely impact the way we love each other. Even when we're in one of our sourest times, that Love IS there is unquestioned. It's just that sometimes both of our hearts get crusted over with the flotsam and jetsam of our past histories and current life pressures. Something needs changed. For starters, we need to believe that this precious relationship deserves, even demands, our mutual commitment to making it ever more conscious. Priorities are adjusted, with each of us striving to take our responsibilities for it to a more deliberate level. And to see to it that our commitments are more grounded, that they go beyond mere duty .

Imagine if we were all serious about doing away with those distracted phone calls between us, the times when we barely listened, perhaps signing a check or writing a memo with the phone tucked between our chin and shoulder while pretending to be relating. We want to eliminate the token lunch with the small talk and our minds elsewhere. We want to do something better than a visit where t.v. is what we relate to. We've all had enough of that. We want something more in this realm called father-daughter. Each of us knows what that something more could look like. Everyone we've asked wants their Father-Daughter Connection to be more than it is.

That means we need more: Consciousness, awareness, commitment. We must demand that each of us be fully present, which means that we listen, hear, and feel. You pick the flavor you know is essential for you in this unique connection, and start figuring out how to change the sometimes zestless thing we now have, and beginning to consciously move it to what you know in your heart of hearts you really, really REALLY want.

Ah, you might ask, "but how can I do that? I haven't done it so far." We haven't done it up 'til now, and how long does he have yet to live? How much time do we have left? Those are scary questions. Now brace yourself for a big knock in the face: Even if only ONE OF YOU starts doing it, it changes the whole relationship for the better. O.K., so if only I start doing it, we both benefit. "Here we go again," a daughter says. "It's always me. I have to make the changes, I have to do the work, and he sits back and does nothing. The Caretaker Professional taking on yet another client."

We understand that wail of despair. We also know that a fair share of fathers have said the same words. All of us wonder when this thing starts getting "reciprocal," when it starts meeting our criteria for "fairplay." Well, we do hear you, and yet we need you to hear that we earnestly believe that there is sometimes an argument for "unilateral actions" to bring about changes. Need we remind you that we're talking about this fragile, utterly frustrating, and yet ultimately incredibly rewarding thing called the Father-Daughter Connection.

So what's this unilateral, change phenomenon we're talking about?

We call it the Ally theory.

We've taught it to literally thousands of people and once they learn and understand it, everyone uses it, and oh, oh, oh, the glorious changes it has wrought. Just like the brilliance behind the invention of a paperclip, the Ally Theory is a simple concept. Let me speak about it from a father's perspective.

One day I decided to become my daughter Julianna's Ally. It was she who originally taught the Ally Theory to me. But I was so busy trying to build a relationship with her new Step Mother that it took me a couple of years to bring it back to Julianna. I feel guilty it took so long, but it took what it took. I haven't wavered much from using the Ally theory with Julianna since. And I honed my skills using it by allying Julianna's "Steppie." I've got it down now for both of them. And so could you.

The Ally Theory Process:

1. I decide to become an ally to you. (My daughter, my father.) I make that conscious, aware, commitment. I will be your ally. (I don't even have to tell you I am going to take you on as an Allee. I can just start doing it.)
2. As your ally, I listen very, very carefully to what it is you say you want to do. Maybe it is to go back to graduate school. Maybe it is to change jobs. Maybe it is to have a baby. Maybe it is to get out of a relationship. Maybe it is to heal your feelings about one of your siblings. I try my darndest not to judge your "want" or to shape it, influence it or change it to meet my standards.
3. I try to help you get what you want. O.K., that seems pretty straightforward. A lot of you "dads" will say "Hell I've been doing that since her diaper days." Well, maybe.

But you might also have to look harshly at how you give advice. You might have to own that you have occasionally been sarcastic about "reality" with your daughter. It's possible that you have been overly managerial and had the "want" come out of you instead of out of her. We dads have our ways. Remember we've been programmed as males to be both the protector and provider. That makes us sometimes insensitive to someone else's process of growing.

That said, well what does an Ally do to help someone get what they want? Our favorite metaphor for that comes from watching one of the first "Rocky" movies. You remember? Stallone is taking a beating in the ring, barely hanging on, but God finally rings the bell. He stumbles back into his corner. There his allies wait. They rinse out his biteplate (ah, there's a help.) They massage his shoulders. They pour a sponge of water over his head. In one grim scene one of his allies takes a razor and cuts the skin near his swollen eye so he can see again. (It might take a little courage for a daddy to do that for a daughter, even symbolically).

Get this point, and get it well. It is central to understanding the Ally Theory. WHEN THE BELL RINGS, (and it always does) ROCKY GOES BACK IN ALONE TO FIGHT THE FIGHT.

So, the major implication for all of that is that as an ally, we don't fight the fight for them. (that's a place where sometimes, some daddy's have lost their way.) They have to do the do's for themselves. We can ask questions, we can help them clarify their goals, we can very carefully, give some advice, but always sparingly. We can connect them to some leads, yet when the time comes, when the bell rings, they go out and fight the fight.

Take that example of a daughter who wants to go back to Graduate School. And I, as a daddy, want to be her ally in this project. So what do I do:

1. I listen very carefully while she talks. I interrupt very infrequently. I active listen in the classic Thomas Gordon Parent Effectiveness manner. I reflect back to her accurately what I hear her saying, avoiding crowding my own "material" (which is usually my anxiety) into what I hear.
   
   
2. I might ask some clarifying questions, and only as many as I observe she can take. I try not to ask questions to which I have already one right answer in mind. For example, I would never ask a question that begins with, "Don't you think you're..." Because that would be a question that already has an answer, and the answer is that she is wrong.

Instead I might ask: "What are some of the really good things that can come out of this move to go to graduate school? What will need to be sacrificed while you're there? What will be the impact on the people close to you? How is the timing for this adventure? How are you going to pay for it? What help do you need from me?"

That last question isn't only about money, but is an open and warm ally question seeking to find out what she really needs, not what I guess she needs, or from my perspective what she damn well better consider she needs. An ally does as few "damn well betters" as he can.

3. Then, always with the Rocky Image in mind, I simply try to help her get what she wants. So, I might pick up a book in my bookstore wanderings, on How to Study for the SAT's, that test you need to take before applying to Graduate Schools. Just like Rocky's helpers, I know she has to take the tests, not me. I might have lunch with her "partner" and see how her dream sits with him and how he feels I might be of help to her.

I could call an admissions officer whom I happen to know and ask her about what works and doesn't work in applications these days. I might offer to help with some of the money, if I can. I might line up some of her siblings and ask them to lend a little support if they can, when they can. I would ask her again, to tell me some ways she sees I might be of help. Ultimately, she controls what help I give.

4. Now, there is one other very important consideration that runs through all ally work. I do what I do with an absolute minimum of negative criticism, and an absolute maximum of positive affirmations and validations. The trembling ally relationship, and the fragile father daughter connection cannot thrive in the midst of abundant and wanton negative criticism. "What you still haven't got your applications in? Just like you. You haven't grown from when you were a teenager. I don't know what I'm going to do with. You make me sick." Etc. Etc. Etc.

The validations, abundant validations, can never be phony and they aren't like "praise" which almost always has a hooker in it. "I'm so proud of you for getting your applications in on time." Hidden in the praise is the idea that if I hadn't gotten them in on time, all support would have been yanked away from me.

Just a few examples:

• "I admire that you want to make your life better."
• "I respect how you handle the complicated details of this task."
• "I appreciate your integrity when you answer my questions."
• "I love the gratitude you show to all of us who want to be of help to you." That's the major dictum in this ally stuff. Maximum Validation and Minimum Negative Criticism. Is that easy? No. Especially depending on how we were handled ourselves by our own caretakers in the area of negative criticism. For a long time, we have been aware of the Victim Begets Victim syndrome. The buck stops when a sensitive, conscious and aware father begins trying to be a real ally to his daughter.

5. Finally, there is an occasional "checkin" between the ally and the allee. We call them THE ALLY REVIEW QUESTIONS.

The ally asks these simple questions, to review the process, and receives honest answers to them.

1. Have you felt my support?
2. Have I done enough of what I said I would do? (those are tremulous questions to ask, because the answer might come back: "No, I haven't felt your support, not even your presence."
3. Have you felt a maximum of validation and a minimum of negative criticism? (Again, a crucial question, and the answer you get, daddy, might not be one you wanted, but we pray you will change when you begin to see the utter importance of that simple notion: Between a Father and a Grown Daughter, there must be: A Maximum of validation and Minimum of negative criticism.)

We're not done yet in this review process. The Allee must ask the following questions and be as open to the answers as you were.

1. Did I give you clear statements on what it is I want to do? (the point here is that if my ally is to be my ally, I have to let him or her know exactly what it is I want to do. Muddy, ambivalent, wish washy goals are tough to ally to.)
2. Was I precise about what help might be useful and what help might not be as salutatory?
3. Did I do these two things with a minimum of negative criticism and a maximum of validation?

Nothing is much sweeter after the bravery of doing the review questions than to collect a warm hug and to share a couple of tender validations of respect and appreciation. The ally theory WORKS. It is something we both have been looking for during the entire length of our connection as fathers and daughters. It is a believable and an achievable goal. It won't come instantly easy for some of us. Our crusted over way of being with a daughter or a father sometimes needs some prior work. But once we get to be willing to be an ally, great sweeping changes occur in our love for each other.

Then, it comes to a dad, as it did to me, when I had a bout with cancer and was in the hospital for 10 agonizingly long days. My daughter, Julianna, picked up her stakes and come down to be with me and my wife, her stepmother. Suzanne, my wife, had been spread pretty thin, doing the hospital runs, dealing with all the caring people who worried and called in, etc. Julianna arrived at Suzanne's door and simply said, "The reserves are here." And they both cried in each other's arms.

Julianna then came to the hospital for a couple of hours each day. She pushed my IV wagon down the halls, while we walked, and walked and walked. Holding my charming catheter bag at my waist. She was at my side. When I fell asleep, I knew she was there, just watching. And she listened, and fought for some better food for me, held my hand, smoothed my brow, brought me stuff to read, reminded me that I was healing and that I would prevail.

It makes my eyes wet to remember. It makes me laugh, too, to know that I have an ally, but when that damn bell rings, I go out to fight it alone, knowing I have a "daughter in my corner." Forever. My ally. And equally sweet, I am one of hers.