CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- This time next year, I'll be the mom of a teenager.

A wise friend who has college-age children has been trying to prepare me for what she claims is the inevitable. She swears the teen years are awful so that it's easier on parents when our offspring leave home.

I'm not sure if I hope that she's right, or that she's wrong.

I can't imagine ever being excited about the prospect of Celeste leaving home, although perhaps I could if I knew it meant she'd be taking a half-dozen animals with her. By the time she's old enough, though, our house probably won't seem as much like the zoo it does now as it will a home for geriatric and intellectually disadvantaged creatures.

I dread the day when it's no longer cute little animals that follow her home, but cute not-little boys.

Even though that worry is still a few years away, Geoff has already been strategizing with one of his friends, who also has a 12-year-old daughter. They've come up with a number of inventive techniques for putting the fear into potential suitors, with their shared goal being no second dates.

The many intricacies of parenting fascinate me. It seems you never stop learning and adjusting, tweaking your technique or plan of attack. Just when you think you have it all figured out, along comes a new phase, fear or dilemma.

From the time Celeste was an infant, I've been keeping track of some of the parenting lessons I've learned. For instance, I once wrote, "I learned that my girl can nap through the roar of a vacuum cleaner circling her crib, but the sound of my head hitting a pillow will wake her 100 percent of the time."

When she was 3: "I've learned a 3-year-old needs a space of her own. And I've learned that most often, that space is in my bed."

As a preschooler, she taught me, "When playing hide and seek with a little one, if it's taking an unusually long time for them to find you, it doesn't necessarily mean you've found a clever hiding place. It means your playmate found something more interesting to do and neglected to tell you."

When Celeste was 7 or 8, she found my list of lessons and added a few of her own. Among hers were, "The taste of hair gel will not wash off someone's toothbrush, no matter how much soap you use." And, "You can't hatch an egg from the refrigerator. Mothers already know this, but some are mean enough to allow you to carry one around for ages anyway."

She also learned that mothers will get really upset if you show company where she hid all the junk that used to be on the kitchen counter just before they arrived.

When Celeste was 9, I learned I could take advantage of her competitive streak and get housework done at the same time by setting a timer and betting her that she couldn't finish a certain chore before it went off.

I also learned that when a competitive child is in a hurry to get the kitchen floor shiny clean, but she can't find the Mop & Glo, she might consider Pledge an adequate substitute.

Sometime early in her 10th year, I learned the importance of making certain a child who has been asked to load and start the dishwasher understands the difference between Cascade and ordinary Dawn dish detergent. (Although I also learned that several feet of Dawn suds can remove the residual Pledge ice-rink effect on the floor.)

Age 11 was a fairly calm, quiet year, and as the days dwindled down before she turned 12, I was struggling to come up with even one lesson to add to my list.

Until the answer appeared right at my feet.

Unfortunately, my feet were going down the stairs in the dark at the time. And Celeste had left a stack of newly purchased school supplies on the stairs, intending to carry them up. She just hadn't yet. Despite numerous trips up and down.

Resulting in my trip down those last few stairs being on my backside.

The lesson?

That children can be a real pain in the butt.

Reach Karin Fuller at karinful...@cnpapers.com.