For the past few weeks, I've been having this internal dialogue with a stranger – a young lady by the name of Maci Hughes, whose recent guest editorial “To all parents, from a teenager” (Op/Ed page, Sept. 26) innocently arrived in my mailbox via The Post late last month.

As the father of a teenage girl, Maci's well-spoken argument for freedom from parental control and intrusion in her life is all too familiar. The Diva has used Maci's logic to try and convince My Lovely Wife and I to allow her to do something our parental intuition warned us against.

And like Maci, The Diva's attempts generally fail.

Were it up to me, my beautiful, 14-year-old daughter would literally never leave her room – nasty as that is. She'd never date. She'd never go to parties. She'd never go to college. She'd never do anything but go to school and come home. That, of course, would be wrong. She'd be safe, but miserable, thus making all of our lives a living hell.

To that point, Maci's argument is absolutely valid. Parents must let teens learn from their mistakes. Here's the problem: Maci is coming strictly from a teen's perspective. The hardest thing about being a parent is worrying, “What if…” Sure, most of those mistakes teens make amount to little more than speeding tickets and black eyes.

But “what if”?

Parents live in a worst-case-scenario world, terrified that one mistake their kids make will literally ruin their lives – or end it completely. Some mistakes can't be learned from, only paid for. These are the realities teens don't want to hear and parents face every time their children are out of sight. Sounds melodramatic, but it's why we overact, why we're overprotective, why we don't “trust” you.

So what are parents to do? There's not much we can do. Handcuffs are expensive and bolting the windows shut is a fire hazard. Teenagers will do stupid things. They will experiment with drugs and alcohol. They will have unprotected sex. They will drive recklessly. They will ignore consequences. They won't care how disappointed their parents will be at having to bail them out of jail at 4 a.m. on Mother's Day (or so I've heard).

And their parents will punish them severely. At least, the good parents will. Then, those same good parents will try and talk to their teen. This too is tricky. The hardest part of parenting is not getting overly emotional – think of the dispassionate cop. Shouting, yelling, preaching, ranting and raving accomplishes nothing.

Like a good marriage, communication is the key to survival. For teenagers, that means talking. For parents, that means listening and not judging. It's hard on both ends. Teenagers think their parents are lame and disconnected from what their lives are “really” like. Parents think their teenagers are nuts and dangerously shortsighted.

Both are right. The only difference is parents survived being a teenager, which comes with wisdom and more than a few scares.

I'm lousy at taking my own advice. I can be terribly dismissive. But no matter how trivial it sounds, when The Diva's willing to talk that means it's important to her. Therefore, it's important to me. While I fight the urge to shake her and shout “what were you thinking?” instead, I take a deep breath, shut up and listen.

Being a teenager is hard. Being a parent is hard. Mistakes will be made on both sides. As long as forgiveness, patience, support and understanding are part of the equation, we just might survive.

And if that fails there's always the handcuffs.