‘Shut up’ and listen: Trace Gallagher shares ‘unexpected’ wisdom learned from being a ‘girl dad’
This active presence extends beyond daily conversations and into how fathers help their daughters build resilience against life’s inevitable bumps, he said. Gallagher recalled watching his youngest daughter take a hard fall during a youth soccer match.
“I’m looking at her, and she’s looking at me, and I said, ‘Hey, it’s all good. You know, it’ll be fine,'” Gallagher recalled. “She scores a goal five minutes later, and she looks over at me…. It is soothing for them to know that somebody is really paying close attention.”
Trace Gallagher’s new book, “Turns Out They Were Right,” is available now. (Trace Gallagher/Fox News Digital)
This contrasts with his mother’s approach when an eight-year-old Gallagher tried to quit football. Instead of making the call for him, his mother — nicknamed “Big Red” — forced him to go to practice and tell the coach himself.
By the end of the day, Gallagher was hooked on the game, in part thanks to a coach who likely sensed his hesitation and put him straight to work.
“The first couple of weeks, it was just tackling and blocking and calisthenics and jumping jacks and push-ups, and I’m like, “Oh I hate this,'” he recalled.
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“So, I’m sitting in my full pads in my mom’s avocado-green recliner … and I said [to my mother], ‘I don’t want to play football anymore. I want to quit.’ And she said, ‘Fine, go quit.’
“I walk on to the practice field and the coach looks at me, and he blows the whistle three times, and then he screams at me, ‘Gallagher! You’re late! Give me five laps.'”
A very young Trace Gallagher is shown on the field in his football jersey. (Trace Gallagher)
Gallagher did as his coach said until he was instructed to get out on the field and stay quiet.
And finally, there were footballs.
“I fell in love with football and played it through college,” he said. “[Coach] saw me coming from a mile away and was not about to let me quit — and my mom knew.”
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“And I think that today, kids need to be put in that very same position. If you want to do something, if you want to quit something, you need to do it. You need to fight your own battles.”
“Listen to people. Hear them out.”
“My advice to everybody is listen,” he went on.
“Listen to people. Hear them out. Sometimes it hits you like a sledgehammer, and sometimes it seeps in, and you don’t really understand it for years. So listen.”
Khloe Quill of Fox News Digital contributed reporting.
Angelica Stabile is a lifestyle reporter for Fox News Digital.
Article source: https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/shut-up-listen-trace-gallagher-shares-unexpected-wisdom-learned-being-girl-dad