Ever since I my daughter turned thirteen, I have felt like I've been walking around with a target on my head and on my back. No darts, just dirty looks and eye rolling. Depends on which way I am standing, walking or sitting. I have thus decided that I need to sit my teenybopping tot down and get all the answers, since as far as I can recall: the omniscient characteristic of teenagers begins to dwindle around seventeen. Turns out, while she may HAVE all the answers, there are some things she really doesn't want to talk about.

Never ask her if she needs underwear or bras in public. Particularly if you are at a store that sells them. Because, apparently, discussing underthings within earshot of human beings that (to be sure!) are SHOCKED that she's wearing them, certainly to not sport such things themselves. Got embarrassment? That does not scratch the surface of the sort of thing that would embarrass a teenager, but how does one navigate through life in the absence of discussing, or even acknowledging, underwear?

Never ask her if she's started her period. Or assume that she has when she calls you from school and says it's an emergency, ask her if she's been to the school nurse. Aside from being peppered with questions about what it's going to be like, when it should happen, how do you feel before it happens, the fact that it is GOING to happen never enters her mind. Eventually, if you possess the right equipment it WILL happen. Trying to explain that she doesn't really WANT it to happen will not make sense until she's done it a couple hundred times and the novelty has worn off.

Never ask her if she's wearing deodorant and then cover your nose. Actually, never mention that she has an odor because she'll just DIE of embarrassment. Even if...she's had that odor all day and all her friends were covering their nose behind her back, and now they are all IMing about how stinky she was today. Ah, teenage girls.

Don't ask about the zits on her back. Good grief, have you no feelings?! Poor thing has probably been twisting and contorting herself to not only get a visual, but plotting the picking demise of the chief skin problem that afflicts teenagers. I say, tell her it's because she didn't clean her room, do her homework or finish her chores. It's an allergic reaction to disobedience! Okay, back to the dirty looks and eye rolling. Well, I say: if nothing you say makes a difference, you might as well find it amusing!

Last but not least, and even though there are a plethora of other things but for the sake of brevity I will desist, do not bother asking how school was today or if she learned anything. Not unless your perception of a sparkling conversational intercourse involves monosyllabic grunting and some eye rolling. Really, the highlight of adolescence. Do they hand that out in a special teenage seminar, or is each teenager naturally equipped? The world may never know! Only teenagers know, and they mysteriously forget at that moment their super knowledge powers begin to dwindle. Which is oddly around the same moment that parents begin to regain some of their long, lost intelligence. Go figure.

Learn more about this author, Vanessa Nelsen.
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