Dad's advice for teens leads to book, new career

Bruce Cameron, author of "Eight Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter"

From Kathy Slobogin
CNN Family and Education Unit

(CNN) -- Bruce Cameron likens parenting female adolescents to surviving blunt force trauma. There's resistance when he tries to stir his girls from sleep or get a little bathroom time to brush his teeth.

So as a guide for other fathers, Cameron's written what he calls an "owners' manual." It's titled "Eight Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter." It includes tips on how to have a meaningful conversation through an often-slammed door and how to detect if there has been a party at your house in your absence. The police tape, he explained, is a giveaway.

Cameron, who lives in Evergreen, Colorado, writes a humor column for the Rocky Mountain News. He admits that many of his tips do not work and concedes that he has not found an effective method to discipline his daughters.

VIDEO CNN's Kathy Slobogin talks with author Bruce Cameron and his daughters about the rules for raising teenage girls (June 14) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

But the girls, Chelsea, 17, and Georgia Lee, 19, said he has one effective punishment. "Hanging out with us is the worst," Georgia Lee said.

"Definitely," agreed Chelsea.

And why?

"I think as an adult you very slowly lose your coolness until you just start sucking it away from other people," Georgia Lee explained.

Cameron said he has gleaned most of his information from extensive research, including fieldwork in shopping malls where he has studied teens' mating rituals and language.

"It was sort of like when Jane Goodall went off to live with the apes," Cameron said. "It was the same sort of thing except for she didn't have to pay the apes' allowance, and I do."

His habit of interviewing dates has stifled the girls' social life, they say, but he denies having asked a suitor for a credit report.

"I know that boys in high school don't have credit, OK? All I said was 'If you're going to take my daughter out on a date, a simple criminal background check is very reasonable,'" Cameron said.

His daughters plan a rebuttal to the book.

"There will be revenge," Chelsea said. "Oh, yes."