It’s official. As of 7:30 yesterday morning I am the father of a 13 year old girl. She has mastered the art of eye rolling, and is making substantial progress in audible sighs, storming out of the room, and door slamming.
So fill me in, all you dopers who either parent teens, or are teens. What am I in for?
I only hope she doesn’t drink too much of my beer, and shares any good drugs she scores.
Tranquilizers a good, failing that, then a bottle of whiskey to settle your nerves with.
You have my sympathy. Wait for it – she’ll be dragging home some boy soon who when presented to you will no doubt trigger the primal Dad urge to rend and tear the pseudo-male youngling standing there in baggy clothing, untied, huge sneakers, assorted piercings and scraggly beard attempts, mouthing words like ‘wazzup’, ‘da bomb’ and so on.
Around about this time Daddy becomes DADDY!, expressed with great exasperation.
Buy Rolaids by the case.
Try to remember that you, also, was a teenager – well, on second thought, you were a male teenager, so thinking about that might not be real good since you have a teen daughter. That might make you inclined to lock her in her room until 21 to keep her from current male teens.
Also remember that at 13 thru 19 no one understands her!
:: pats you on the back::
I offer you my condolences. As a teenager myself, you are going to go to hell and back. But it’ll be worth it when she grows up and you can kick her out of the house.
I have a 15 y/o daughter… she has a 17 y/o b/f… they hug and smooch in front of me… :o She reports to me with disgust that one of her former friends is having sex and she (my daughter) thinks that’s stupid. I’m glad to hear that…
These have been difficult times in that I want her to be independent commensurate with her years, I want her to make her own decisions as much as possible, and I want her to live with the consequences. At the same time, I watch EVERY move as discreetly as I can and talk to her as much as she allows about what’s going on in her life and what choices she’s made/making. Her dad, having been a teenage boy himself, is a total wreck these days.
Would that I could offer comfort or words of wisdom. I try to remind myself that we’ve done pretty good so far instilling values and nurturing intelligence in our only child. She’s smart, happy, compassionate, and pretty well-grounded, and her bitchy days are well-scattered. She still says “I love you” to us and we get unsolicited good-night kisses every night. When I get the eye-rolling, I reassure her that it’s just a mom thing that I have to do and she sighs and life goes on.
Someday, she’ll have kids of her own… 
I’m past that and into the disgusted “DUDE!” stage. And she has ME doing it, too. And she dumped Mr Bad Teenaged Mustache last year. So why hasn’t my life improved?
Hah! My ten-year-old had that stuff down pat by the age of six! By the time she hits thirteen I’ll be prepared for heroin addiction and unwanted pregnancy.
You Chicagoans and your wholesome offspring. You have it dead easy.
Ah, Dinsdale, you have both my heartfelt sympathy as well as my envy. My second child, a daughter, turned 18 last month and has moved out of the house and entered the world. Watch out world! For the past two years we have been a dad/daughter single parent family. There were times when I wanted to smack her like a wet pair of lips. On more than one occasion I found myself brow-beating some punk ass little teenaged boy simply because he’d worked up the courage to ask my lovely daughter out on a date. (It’s a dad thing and you’ll experience it eventually.) I could bore you with “goofy, hormonally enraged, out-of-control teenager” stories, but you will be making your own. On the other hand there were all of those wonderful moments we spent together, the times she came to me for advice or simply an ear, the moments that she reserved for me even though she’d been invited out with friends… Ahh.
Mark Twain wrote that when a child turned thirteen “place him in a barrel and feed him through the hole. When he turns sixteen, plug the hole.” While that little aphorism ran through my mind from time to time, I can honestly say that the time I spent with my daughter was mostly good and that I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Enjoy her, try to understand her (good luck!), and cherish the time that you have remaining with her at home-it’ll pass by before you know it! Good luck and have fun!
Having once been a 13-year-old girl myself, I can assure you that she will hate both you and her mom for the next several years, on the basis of your extreme uncoolness (or in the case of MY father, extreme nerdiness).
There is nothing you can do about this. No matter how cool you actually are, your teenage daughter will see you as a horrible source of embarassment. And she will think you are being so incredibly embarassing intentionally so as to ruin her life.
(Case in point: I was so embarassed by my father that I made him drop me off several blocks from our destination so that I would not be seen anywhere near him. I thought he deliberately wore those clothes, had that hairstyle and drove that car in order to make me look foolish in front of my friends {read: boys} and therefore cause them to never speak to me again)
I also started calling him Father, or in dire situations, reverted to the aforementioned DADDY! (Insert foot-stomp here.)
Unfortunately, there is not much advice for dealing with this situation. You can’t stop being her dad or avoid being in the same room with her or meeting her friends. But I do have some helpful tips:
Tip 1: Do NOT, under any circumstances, tell jokes of any kind to her friends or in the presence of her friends. Dad jokes will result in much eye-rolling and red-faced fleeing from the room and the occassional stomping of the foot.
Tip 2: Do not be offended when she tells you how uncool you, your car, job, house, lifestyle, etc is/are. At this point anything that is not a teenager or Mtv is uncool. You will actually be in the majority.
Tip 3: If she asks you not to wear whatever it is you’re wearing, tell her she can pick something out of your closet for you to wear instead. After she has seen what is in your closet and insists that you must purchase an entirely new wardrobe, inform her that would mean you can’t afford to buy any new clothes for her. End of story.
Tip 4: Try not to pray aloud for the end of her teenage years. This will result in room-fleeing and door-slamming, accompanied by wailed choruses of “You just don’t understand me” as well as plaintive requests to her mother to please get her a new father.
Tip 5: In stressful times (which will be approximately the next 5 years), just repeat the following helpful mantra to yourself SILENTLY: “She’s (insert age here). This too, shall pass.”
Hope all of this helps, Dins! 
As the mother of a fourteen year old daughter who’s every waking a moment is “a Hell from which there is no escape” [She’s a Drama Queen. Gets it from …um… her father. ], I offer this advice:
Post “Ten Simple Rules for Dating My Daughter” on your fridge. I made her memorize it and told her I was passing it out to her dates. I was only half kidding.
Breathe. Deep cleansing breaths. Keep telling yourself that this, too, shall pass.
:: hugs and sympathetic pat on the back ::
And in case you don’t have it:
Ten Simple Rules for Dating My Daughter
Rule One:
If you pull into my driveway and honk you’d better be delivering a package,
because you’re sure not picking anything up.
Rule Two:
You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long
as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes
or hands off of my daughter’s body, I will remove them.
Rule Three:
I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear
theirs trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips.
Please don’t take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are
complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded about this issue,
so I propose this compromise: you may come to the door with your underwear
showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, in
order to ensure that your clothes do not, in fact, come off during the
course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric nail gun and
fasten your trousers securely in place to your waist.
Rule Four:
I’m sure that you’ve been told that in today’s world, sex without utilizing
a “barrier method” of some kind can kill you. Let me elaborate, when it
comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I will kill you.
Rule Five:
In order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports,
politics, and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only
information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have
my daughter safely back at my house, and the only word I need from you on
this subject is “early.”
Rule Six:
I have no doubt you are a popular fellow, with many opportunities to date
other girls. This is fine with me as long as it is okay with my daughter.
Otherwise, once you have gone out with my little girl, you will continue to
date no one but her until she is finished with you. If you make her cry, I
will make you cry.
Rule Seven:
As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and
more than an hour goes by, do not sigh, and fidget. If you want to be on
time for the movie, you should not be dating. My daughter is putting on her
makeup, a process that can take longer than painting the Golden Gate Bridge.
Instead of just standing there, why don’t you do something useful, like
changing the oil in my car?
Rule Eight:
The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter: Places
where there are beds, sofas, or anything softer than a wooden stool. Places
where there are no parents, policemen, or pastors within eyesight. Places
where there is darkness. Places where there is dancing, holding hands, or
happiness. Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my
daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than
overalls, a sweater, and a goose down parka zipped up to her throat. Movies
with a strong romantic or sexual theme are to be avoided; movies, which
feature chain saws are okay. Hockey games are okay. Old folks homes are
better.
Rule Nine:
Do not lie to me. I may appear to be a potbellied, balding, middle-aged,
dimwitted has-been. But on issues relating to my daughter, I am the
all-knowing, merciless commander of your universe. If I ask you where you
are going and with whom, you have one chance to tell me the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres
behind the house. Do not trifle with me.
**Rule Ten: **
Be afraid. Be very afraid. It takes very little for me to mistake the sound
of your car in the driveway for a chopper coming in over a rice paddy
outside of Hanoi. When my Agent Orange starts acting up, the voices in my
head frequently tell me to clean the guns as I wait for you to bring my
daughter home. As soon as you pull into the driveway you should exit your
car with both hands in plain sight. Speak the perimeter password, announce
in a clear voice that you have brought my daughter home safely and early,
then return to your car-there is no need for you to come inside. The
camouflaged face at the window is mine.
[I recieved this in email. No idea of its true beginnings]
The battle is just beginning. For a taste of the action, I’d suggest starting here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=52873&pagenumber=1
Ranger, you Rock! I can’t wait to have a family of my own, and that sure as hell will be waiting framed on the inside of the front door. 
ranger - Me like. Thanks.
One of my brothers has a daughter, who is an only child. Someone sent him the 10 Rules and he’s this big burly guy who’s into weights, karate and something like Kung Fu (I dunno. I’m a 200 pound weakling.)
He thought those rules were pretty cool.
His daughter, who is not yet 12, is discovering guys. His wife thinks it’s funny. *He, having been a hormonal teen guy seemingly not all that long ago, doesn’t.
Especially since he’s conservative and tends knot up his fists when these current guy kids saunter by wearing cargo pants big enough for two, dark, drab baggy shirts, funny hair cuts and boxers pulled up nearly to nipples. He tries real hard not to talk to them because the sullen, hip-hop/street talk lingo about drives him maniacal.
Reminds me of Schwartzenegger in Kindergarten Cop.
I just can’t wait until she reaches the teen years and becomes a genuine *teenager. I think he’ll be on tranquilizers.
As a recent former teenager (I’m 22), I’m just starting to look back at my teenage years as my parents may have seen them. And honestly, my parents got pretty lucky with my brother and me. No, they didn’t get lucky, entirely – they did right by us when we were little, and reaped the benefits of that when we were teenagers.
Which is not to say we were best buds with our parents. Far from it. But Dinsdale, if you’ve and your wife have raised your daughter right, and you have a solid relationship, and you work to maintain that relationship in whatever ways you can, you’ll be all right. And she’ll turn out all right. We did some give-and-take, some arguing, and some ignoring, but my parents and I are good friends. I don’t think we were ever not good friends, but now that I’m an adult, the dynamic has changed. Just stay in her life as much as she’ll let you – or more. Take her (and/or her friends) out to dinner, or to a play. Have family time. If you’re religious, keep encouraging her faith and her participation at religious services.
Looking back, one of the best things I think my parents did was not criticize my taste. It’s pretty amazing, now that I think about it, but they kept their mouths shut when I was raving about how in love I was with the New Kids or 90210 or whatever it was that month. They let me go on my happy little 13y/o obsessive way, and I got over it. Thank God.
Be her friend, but be her Dad first. She has plenty of friends.
You’ll get through it, and maybe even enjoy it! (it’s possible, I promise.)
[/soapbox] (sorry 'bout that!)
Oh – and as for the dating thing? My dad always threatened to steal Bill Cosby’s act:
Date comes to the door, the girl is (of course) upstairs getting ready. So Dad talks to Date.
DAD: Tell me, son, if a complete stranger came up to you on the street, a well-dressed, clean, nice-looking stranger, and asked you to loan him your car – promised to return it full of gas, without a scratch, in pristine condition – would you loan it to him?
DATE: No way! Are you kidding?!
DAD: So why should I let you take my daughter out this evening?
And the kid, of course, blushes and stutters and has no answer.
Lucky for me, my dad never did that.
Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all night.
Glad to be of service. If nothing else, it makes you smile when you need it.
remembering being thirteen and shuddering
I’m 24 and my mom is one of my best friends now. Really. Honest. I’m sure my dad and I would be on great terms too, but he died when I was seventeen. I wouldn’t advise going quite that far; I wasn’t that bad a kid, just irritating.
She’s not going to want you to tell her what to do for several years. She probably never did but that feeling will be multiplied. Then one day when she’s officially Grown Up she will turn to you for advice on some big issue…and you’ll be in the position to tell her, “It’s up to you, it’s your decision.” And she will probably get as mad as I did the first time my mom did that to me, because I wanted her to tell me what to do. She wouldn’t, dammit!
Now that I want my mom to tell me what to do sometimes she won’t. It’s absolutely infuriating. Hmm…wait a minute, I sense a trend here…
Poor Dinsdale!
Okay, I’m just remembering back to my own teen years… this mostly applies to my mom, but she was the major presence most of the time (my step-dad was only there for three years).
It is actually possible to be a cool parent - allow her to have parties at your house, provide the pizza and soda, and keep completely out of sight. Don’t complain about the noise (much), and make sure she gets her friends to help clean up. Teach her to be a responsible host by letting her be in charge of some or all of the decisions (depending on the kind of party). My mom did this. Parties continued at our house until we graduated college. Mom even volunteered (in no uncertain terms) to drive home anyone who was impaired (generally having arrived that way, since she didn’t supply beer), or to call their parents to pick them up. She got a few 3 AM wake up calls, and without a blink, drove said folks home. Best perk? You know where your child is at 2 AM! And after a short while, my mom actually became friends with some of her kids’ friends, was someone they came to for advice, etc. I was constantly being told how lucky I was to have such a cool mom, even when I thought she was uncool. Mostly that had to do with the free food. It was worth the expense.
Be prepared to hurt. My mom even told me how bad it hurt, though I didn’t realize it at the time. She said, “The hardest thing I have ever done in my life is to watch you struggle and do nothing. But sometimes that is the right thing to do. In this case <something about a broken heart, I think>, I can’t help you, you have to figure it out on your own.” She had tears in her eyes when she said that, and now, even with only a 3-yr-old, I know why. Usually she would be glad to talk things out, but would not ‘help’ me make a decision. I could fall on my butt, and she wouldn’t help me back up automatically, but she’d be there if I wanted to ask how to get back up again, myself. (Sometimes she prompted those conversations…)
Teach negotiation NOW. We had some negotiation expectations that made both our lives easier. If I wanted to do something she didn’t want me to do, I had to prove I could handle it, and we’d discuss the range of options until it was somewhere within range for both of us. Say, curfew - she let me set what I considered a reasonable time to come home. If I was 5 minutes late, she got to pick the time for the next month. I had to negotiate the time I picked, and she ended up negotiating the ‘punishment’ time. Or, going to China when I was 17 - for 5 weeks. I knew I had to answer every concern she would have - how I was paying for it, health issues, safety issues, etc. I had all that planned out even before I mentioned it to her, because I knew I could negotiate with her. My brother negotiated a road trip to see a band… 12 hours away. He negotiated a driving rotation, places to stay, rules of behavior for the others going along, and so forth - and got to go. He also stuck pretty close to those rules (and enforced them), because if he blew it, the next time, the answer would be a flat NO.
Watch her relationships, not by what the guy looks like, but how her other friendships and relationships are doing. You know you have a bad situation when you stop seeing her other friends around, or they start acting jumpy around her. My mom trusted this, and as a result did NOT freak (openly, at least) when I started dating this tall, dark, silent guy who always showed up in a black leather jacket and motorcycle boots, wearing ripped out jeans with bizzare tights under them. He even had an earring and a pony-tail, for heaven’s sake! She had absolutely no clue what I saw in him, but she saw that my other relationships - even those with my siblings - improved after I started dating him. It took a few years after I married my epeepunk before she could see what it was I loved about him. But she knew he was a good thing long before that, and trusted it.
Prepare to stay up late when she comes home late. Not because you were worried, but just because you were reading a book and suddenly felt like a cup of cocoa or some ice-cream (I actually bought that one quite a few times!). Then stay up later, and talk. Late night talks after an evening out with friends was one of the best ways I kept in touch with my mom. I was too punchy from the hour to be worried about being uncool, and usually buzzed from the pleasure of being out late, and always felt like a grownup being able to come home and not get grilled about where I was and with whom. That made me much more open to talking about deep stuff, relationships, sex, philosophy, and so on. I don’t know how she started the conversations, I think usually by offering something indulgent to eat or drink (ice-cream sundaes!). Even if I turned her down, I often stayed to keep her company while she drank her cocoa (or whatever).
My step-dad just expected a lot from us. He expected us to be responsible, no matter what else was happening. He also respected us, and when he saw us struggling on something, offered tools to help us do it ourselves. That came in the form of study help, talking about relationships, and loads of offers to help us learn something by teaching it himself. And if he thought you’d do something dangerous, he’d step in and show you how to do it ‘right’ - proving that not only was he cool (he knows how to make contact explosives!), but he was really and truly THERE for us, on our terms, not just his.
I still put both parents through some sleepless nights and a lot of greif. But overall, I was easy, in part because I felt respected, and probably more because they had a clue how to handle me. I’m sure they were rolling their eyes much of the time, but they never once showed it.
Well, I’m your not-so-average 16 year old male. I believe in not smoking, drinking, or doing drugs. You will encounter no males like me. I’m the last of a dying breed. Watch out…
Haha.
Hahaha.
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
evil laughter
regains composure
Actually, teens aren’t all that bad. Well, I was never a bad one.
Good luck though.
I agree with Welfy. We’re really not so bad. Be nice to us and we’ll be nice to you. I think one really inportant thing is flexibility though. Oh, and willingness to drive her all over.