My daughter turns 18 in a few days and we will send her off to college three weeks later.  Since most WGOM citizens have younger children or are just starting families, I thought it would be interesting to hear from someone on the backend, someone who successfully (I think) raised up a kid and is preparing to send her out into the world.  What I write below is based on my experiences raising a daughter (and a nearly 16 year old son) but also from talking/venting with friends and relatives with similar aged kids.  The following is both advice and just top of the head rambling.

I’ve said this before but it bears repeating:  Girls are harder than boys.  Girls are harder on their moms than their dads, although your mileage may vary.  This just isn’t our experience but the experience of all of our friends who have both boys and girls.  I think it’s because girls (and their mothers) generally are more emotional.  There’s more drama involved with girls than with boys.  Issues that are a BIG DEAL to girls and moms get shrugged off by males.  It’s not a bad thing (especially for us dads), but something that you (and particularly your wife) will have to deal with, especially once your daughter hits about age 10.

The flip side of course is that girls are closer to their mothers.  It seems counterintuitive I know but the fact that moms and daughters battle one another means that they have a closer relationship.  There are things that my daughter tells her mother that she wouldn’t dream of telling me, and not just issues related to “women’s personal hygiene.”   So being a father to a teenage daughter is kind of a mixed bag.  You are relieved that you don’t have the battle scars your wife does, but you kind of envy the bond that those scars form.

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