Text Talk: Stories from Home by Carly Pietrzyk

I have to admit I love my cell phone, but I was resistant to the texting craze and preferred to communicate with people via phone calls and emails. However, this changed when my daughter got her first cell phone at age 11. She plays soccer several days a week and carpools with other families, so my husband and I wanted to get her a phone to make sure we had a way to contact her when we were not there. I originally thought this would mean an exchange of phone calls, but in typical tween fashion she immediately gravitated toward texting as her main mode of contact. This is when the texting world unfolded for me. I learned the lingo and began communicating with my daughter when she was not with me. She is now 12 ½ and texting gives her a way to check in with me and ask me for advice when she is with her friends. This allows her to ask me things she might not want to ask out loud in front of her friends! I am sure I will appreciate this even more when she and my younger son hit the teenage years!
Carly Pietrzyk, working mother of two children; Ava 12 and Carl 10. Pittsburgh, PA