It's not a new thing to many people when we talk about father-daughter tensions.

There's always this image of a strict Asian father, together with this hot-headed liberal daughter, struggling to upkeep their strained relationship due to different perspectives.

I have my fair share of father-daughter tensions but my version doesn't fit the stereotypical image.
For me, my dad is not a strict father but a sure hot-headed one, whereas I was the "5%rebellious-95% good" daughter. There were never really overt conflicts between me and him.

However, the occasional fiery and unreasonable outbursts from my hot-tempered dad are enough to make me feel detached from and angry with him, hence our tension.
I don't understand why he always make a big fuss out of something small. In the end, the family will become his outlet of anger release.

I remember when I was younger, if we quarrelled, I would not greet him when I enter the house (which I usually do) and would slam my bedroom door hard just so to spite him. When I was in my bedroom, I would lament about my dad.
Why can't he be a nice dad like everybody else's? Why can't he change?!!

When I was in primary school, I would write inspirational quotes on nice papers and paste them on my cupboard. One of them goes like this:
Everybody thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself

Only when I was older, probably in upper secondary/JC, did I realise the value of this quote.

So I decided, if God is in me, I should be full of love and thankfully God did fill me with more love. I decided to change my attitude towards him instead of want him to change.
I would try to calm him down if his tempers began to flare. I wanted to be a good and loving daughter so if we were to quarrel, I would take the initiative to talk to him first.

After years of attitudinal change towards him, in recent times, he really became better!
He would not flare up so often and he would sometimes initiate to ask about my day. You can say that age has mellowed him but I believe that our family's patience and prayers helped as well.

Perhaps, your father is not like that but I write this so that we can quit trying to make a person you want to change, change.

Instead, we ought to look at how we can adjust our attitude towards him/her. We never know, we may see that person changing for the better.

Today, my sis and I bought him a brand new electronic shaver as his belated father's day present. Definitely not a norm, but both of us decided to be different this year.

His reaction?
Both his grin and gratitude were huge (:

Happy Belated Father's Day, dad.