The Single Dad’s Dreaded Day

My daughter has thoroughly enriched my life and I am forever grateful that I somehow got lucky enough to be her dad, but there is one particular day that will happen that has me nervous (a little scared in fact).

As some point in the next year or two, she will move on from little girl to young lady and have all of the biological things that go along with that.  Normally, I take parental challenges head-on and feel confident that I'm raising a good human being, but in this case I find myself thinking "I hope she's with her mom when it happens."  Is that normal?  Am I the only single dad who hopes to not have to deal with that?  I'm assuming her mother has had the appropriate talks and at some point will drop off the necessary supplies at my house just in case, but I am actually pretty content just pretending that it isn't going to happen.  I mean, there's more to the story here.

When a girl "becomes a woman", it isn't just the new items on the grocery list that change, but there are other hormonal changes that take place as well.  I have read a few forums of parents talking about how ridiculously moody their daughter has become since that fateful day.  Is that actually true?  I mean, I've definitely had some admittedly PMS prone women in my life over the years, but it's not like I've never seen a moody teenage boy.  I'm hoping that a well adjusted little girl won't go through a complete personality change when the inevitable happens.  I love who she is and I suppose I'm a little afraid of anything that could change her in a major way over the course of a few weeks.

When the day comes, if it should happen to be on one of the days where she is staying with me, I guess I'll take the Al Bundy approach and just tell her to "Walk it off."