Father Knows Best?

If you've got a teen-age daughter living under your roof, chances are you can relate to a funny new book called “8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter.”

Author W. Bruce Cameron is the father of two teen-age girls and he visited The Early Show to talk about a few of his rules.

Cameron wrote this book as a survival guide of sorts for parents who are facing teen-age "horrors" such as prom night, driving lessons and the many mysteries of teen-age logic.

The author is a humor essayist for the Rocky Mountain News and his Internet-based humor column, The Cameron Column, is a newsletter that started as an e-mail to 6 people and now reaches an audience in the thousands.
Cameron has two teen-age daughters and one younger son and credits his daughters with driving him crazy enough to have enough material for the book.
The following is an excerpt:

Studies show that the world population of teenagers is on the rise, and I'm convinced that every single one of them comes over to my house after school to eat my food. (My wife ignores my instructions and actually spends money trying to satisfy these adolescent appetites, which is a bit like trying to warm a winter day by turning up the heat and opening your windows.)

Anyway, the world is positively teeming with teenagers, and as long as people continue to think about starting a family, the trend is likely to continue. This is not my fault. I am only willing to accept the blame for the ones that my wife caused and have taken educational measures with her to make sure it doesn't happen again. But if I am, indeed, surviving the experience, perhaps I can share with you some of the knowledge I have so painfully gained over what has been more than half a decade of tears, hormones, and stress fractures. If you've had a baby, or are engaged in breeding, I will tell you what you have to look forward to. If it's been about a dozen birthdays since you brought home that darling little bundle of girl baby, I am willing to explain the skills and tactics you will need to make it through the next eight years with a minimum of trauma.

Having a child mutate into a teenager is a bit like being an airline passenger who must suddenly take over for a stricken pilot and land the plane. And in this case, the passengers are all yelling, "I hate you! I hate you!" and slamming the door to the cockpit.

With a book like this- an "owner's manual," if you will - you may learn enough to make it to the airport safely. Otherwise, you might as well go back and finish watching the movie with everybody else.

If you think you might be suffering from the onset of teen-age years, the author advises that you look for these signs:

• Your phone is always busy, so you put in a second line and it's always busy.
• Your gas tank is always empty and your laundry basket is always full.
• While you've generally been in favor of them up until now, suddenly "Miracle ras" seem like a really bad idea.
• You realize it's been more than a year since you haven't had to pay a late fee when you rent a video.
• Your car insurance suddenly costs more than your car.

If you are experiencing some of the above warning signs, the author says, do not panic, just buy the book.

© MMI Viacom Internet Services Inc. All Rights Reserved.Reprinted from 8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter by W. Bruce Cameron. Excerpted by permission of Workman Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher