Text lecturers? Cell phones becoming a key parenting tool

(MCT) — Five years ago, teens who came home later than agreed upon expected a royal parental chewing out as soon as they stepped in the door. Not anymore. Now, they'll get a furiously typed text message that's both sooner and shorter, something like:

U broke yr curfew better c u home soon!!!

How much parenting is done by text messaging these days? Probably more than most moms and dads would like to admit. Texting is instant, convenient, efficient and most important, most kids today respond much more quickly to texts than calls, if they even bother to check voice mail at all. As e-mail is to snail mail, texting is to speaking.

"I wouldn't have thought I'd be into it, but it's a great way to stay in touch with my seventh-grade son," said Kristin Anderson of Minneapolis. "I text him at the school dance, while shopping at Target, even from a floor away in our house. We've even done it while riding in the car, while Dad was driving — calm down, Oprah." But she and her husband draw the line on texting during dinner or at church.

For Anastasia Pydych of Edina, Minn., texting not only helps locate her 15-year-old daughter in large concert arenas, but also keeps tabs on where she is, and with whom; she asks her teen to take a photo showing where she is and text it to Mom. As for her 18-year-old son, Pydych says, "I have alleviated my stress by sending him 'Where are you?' texts at 1 a.m. while I'm tucked into bed. In the old days, parents rang a bell and yelled down the street 'Come on home.' Using this new tool is a little fuzzy, one more layer we have to deal with. At some point you have to let go and trust that your kid is making good decisions."

Victoria Norvell of Minneapolis, who has two girls, finds texting to be a helpful mothering aid, but she also sees its downside.

"It's really difficult to be funny or detailed in a text, to add nuance," she said. "And teenage-girl fights via texting are totally annoying."

According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, a teenage girl typically texts 80 messages a day, compared with a boy's 30 messages.

Dr. Leonard Sax, author of noted adolescent-behavior books "Girls on the Edge" and "Boys Adrift," sees teens, particularly girls, as being "trapped in a cyberbubble of texting and instant messaging. They're hyper-connected to other people but disconnected from themselves. Face-to-face or on the phone, conversation is an art. Your 12-year-old daughter needs to be working on these skills instead of developing her thumbs."