Here's a parenting problem I could not have predicted back when she was refusing to wear dresses because boys on the playground could see too much, or so she said:

My grown daughter is hesitant to start a new romantic relationship without buy-in, or at least casual approval, from me. The dilemma lies in how much to encourage it, how much to stand back.

Now, I do want to know what he looks like so that I can picture the two of them together whenever I get the rundown on their dates as we talk on the phone – she lives in a neighboring state. She reads my mind and sends a photo from the beach via cellphone, which frustrates me in its tininess. A black-haired Ryan Gosling? A young Alec Baldwin? I don't know; I can't see much of him in thumbprint size behind those sunglasses!

Nevertheless, I do the modern mom thing and reply by text message, saying he is good-looking but that it's the inside beauty that counts.

Next, she reports to me that they spent three nights in a row together. I try to shove the ramifications of the verb "spent" together with the noun "night" out of my mind (wasn't it just yesterday that she giggled about her middle school sex ed classes?).

It briefly flashes in my mind the lament I heard from a friend a while back, that her newlywed daughter was asking her for advice on bedroom matters. Whew! At least I'm not in that predicament -- yet.

But it's the way my daughter says, "I think this could reeeeaaaally be it, Mom," that tells me she's seeking the go-ahead from me.

I want to say, "Go, get swept off your feet, have a romance," but my mind goes back to the heartbreak of a couple of previous relationships and the she-wolf in me wants to protect her from the unpredictable behavior of the male species.

Still, she could use more excitement in her life and a companion in exploring the city that she moved to only a year ago.

I figure my job is to just skim the surface of details about where they go and what they do, changing the subject when she wants to describe the growing feelings they have for each other, if that's where the relationship is going.

You see, maybe I could have counseled caution and asked to meet the guy back when she was in high school, but she is on a different level of self-determination now. Mistakes will be made, without my ever hearing about them.

My work in the romance counseling department is done, sort of.