If only we could always be this closeIt seems like ever since I birthed a girl child, I've been getting warnings (mostly unsolicited) that the teen years are going to be hell on earth. The way I see it, I have two choices. I can put up an ad on Craigslist that announces a kid for sale and let the offers roll in (ahem, that's a joke oh interwebs) or I can tell the naysayers where they can shove it. 

Attention y'all. I am choosing option two. I am terrified as all get out, but I refuse to believe that this is an impossible task. Hey, I WAS a teenage girl once. And sitting here, with my 6-year-old safely ensconced in first grade, I have time to think this thing through. I have time to plan what kind of mother of a teenage girl I want to be.

And so here it is: all the advice I have for the mom I will be (or hope to be anyway) when my daughter is a teenager:

Your child has possibly been killed, please come and identify the body. They are the most incomprehensible words a parent could ever hear, ones most of us surely try to push away when we hear tragic stories like the 22 children who were killed in a bus crash in Switzerland overnight. As investigators figure out the how and why, as two schools mourn the death of beloved teachers and classmates, the parents of those 12-year-olds are in a private hell. Not just because their child has probably died, but also because many are flying by private military plane to the accident far from their home. Process that for a minute ... they can't run to their baby's side right now -- they actually have to take mass transit to get to them.

It's awfully tempting to say that we have it so much worse than our parents did. They didn't have to worry about us texting and driving or the ozone layer being completely obliterated by SUVs and hairspray. But this week we've been served a sad reminder that the more things change, the more parenting comes down to one cruel fact.

We can only do so much to protect our kids, but in the end, they -- not us -- control their destinies. Just look at Taylor Sauer, the Idaho teenager whose last Facebook blast, sent out on her cellphone as she hurtled down the highway, has made the rounds of the web. Just before slamming into a tanker truck as she drove home from college, Sauer sent out one last ominous message.

If there was some sort of fairy dust I could sprinkle on my kids to either stay young or bypass the teenage years completely, I may consider it. Those teen years are my biggest fear. Puberty, sex, and driving. No thanks. But I can't keep my kids locked in a room from 13 to 18 (right?), so instead of freaking out over all the terribly tragic stories out there, I need to focus on the good ones. Seventeen-year-old Graceann Rumer is a good kid. She makes me see it's okay to let teens be teens and learn to drive. Just two weeks ago, she was figuring out which is the gas pedal and which is the brake and had been driving to school with her family for practice. But on Tuesday she decided to take the school bus instead.

It was also on Tuesday that her bus driver, 51-year-old Charles Duncan, had a heart attack while driving and slumped to the floor. His body was blocking the brake pedal as the bus headed for oncoming traffic with nearly 40 students on board.

If you've ever been walking down a city street and hit by a kid on roller skates or on a scooter or even on a bike, then you know parents aren't watching their kids on riding toys. As a mom of two kids who often use riding toys AND sidewalks, I get how hard it can be, but I also don't think it's good for anyone when parents allow their kids to ride like crazy people. That is why I support the idea of ticketing kids (and parents) who use riding toys recklessly.

A 6-year-old boy who crashed his toy motorcycle into an SUV in Mexico was ticketed, hit with a $183 fine, and had his motorized toy confiscated. His mother is furious, but I think the police handled it well. What was a 6-year-old doing in the street driving a toy motorcycle?

Kids are seriously dangerous on riding toys. My 3-year-old son rides over my foot at least four times a day on his toy ATV and that is just in our tiny house. Outside, he would be a menace.

It's one of the great ironies of raising kids. When they're small, you can't wait until they're old enough to play games with you, and then with other kids. When they're teenagers, you live in constant fear that they're engaging in one of the hot "games" of the moment.

You want to say your daughter won't be the next Jasmine Crawley, the 13-year-old kid beaten senseless in a school bathroom because she and her girlfriends were playing the 30-second game. But you can't, can you? Because you remember some of the lame-brained things you did with your friends, and you live in constant fear that your kid is next. But if you're depending on your memory of those idiot schemes to keep your kid safe, you're out of luck.

It's not often that I can feel out and out sympathy for a member of the Kardashian klan. But I tend to make an exception for Kim & Ko's little sisters. Kendall Jenner is a teenager growing up in the spotlight, and every single thing her parents do for her is treated to intense speculation. But it turns out Kendall is spending a lot of time being a pretty normal teen.

Take Kendall's new car -- a gift for her 16th birthday. While the world is busy snarking on Kris and Bruce for going overboard for the sweet 16, let's get real. Sixteen-year-olds across this country get wheels for their birthday, and nobody blinks an eye. I say good for the Jenners.

I've sort of been expecting someone to blame schools for introducing teenagers to the dangerous world of eating disorders. After all, parents are more than willing to blame MTV for teen pregnancy and Facebook for "letting" their kids cyberbully. But the XO Jane article titled "Health Class Taught Me How to Have an Eating Disorder" was still a tough read.

I once was that teenage girl sitting in a classroom learning that some girls lose weight by throwing up everything they eat. And yes, I would go on to battle bulimia for many years, despite the warnings that it was one of the absolute worst ways to attack the battle of the bulge. But I'm still not buying the argument that talking to our kids about tough topics is the wrong way to go. It sounds like a cop-out.