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Kids and texting can be perilous!

For you non-textors, that would translate to "Be sure your kids know you have a life". I have written a piece, which covers this very topic, for a new book that will be coming out this summer. I'm not sure if I'm at liberty at this point to reveal the title of the book, so I won't do that here, but if I discover that I am, I'll add the title later!

I had an experience last fall with one of our daughters that really gave me pause and shed some light on this very situation, among others. I had confiscated her cell phone because I had caught her using it during forbidden late-night hours. Wishing to confirm that this had not been a first-timer's offense, I checked her text log, only to discover this text to a friend about future plans and her mother's ability to drop everything to be at her beck and call:

"Dnt wry  my mom cn driv fer sur  she has NO LIF!"

Aside from being incensed at what I was reading, I was also shocked. Did my 13 year old actually believe this? I am a working mother, balancing family, work and many other activities. I am woman. Hear me roar!

Seriously...I work about 25 hours a week as a Grant Writer for a large accounting firm. I am also a contract writer. I write two blogs, including this one. I have a book being published this August with my good friend, Shop & Tell, and am a contributing author to another one that's coming out in June. I also have a home-based business, as well as numerous outside activities and volunteer "gig's" that require time away from my family. Having said all of that, I do think that I manage to juggle all of it pretty well, leaving time for my family and their needs (most of the time!).

So, to learn that my daughter believes, and shares with her friends no less, that I "have no life" was disturbing on a number of different levels, to say the least. Now, part of it, I have to say, was ultimately a 13 year old's desire to puff herself up in some way in her own social world. That adolescent angst-ridden world is certainly no place that I would wish on anyone. So, from that standpoint, I gave her a small pass.

On the other hand, she wound up getting a little lesson in just what it is that Mommy does all day - for her family and for herself. Things like:

• Shopping for groceries on my way to work when I know the weather's cold enough that they can sit in the car all day and be all right
• Returning kids' books to the library on my lunch hour
• Writing and editing oodles of grant documents for my clients at work
• Going directly from work to a committee meeting for the local battered women's shelter
• Taking my lunch hour to go to a meeting to plan the next party for school
• Leaving the kids and my Big Strong Man on their own for dinner, so I can go to my book club to discuss the classic, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers
• Making edits to my partner's and my upcoming book
• Fixing dinner most nights for our family
• Picking up the house on a continual basis
• Paying bills, doing laundry and keeping up with other details around the house (These, I confess, are shared with my Big Strong Man, which makes me the luckiest woman on the planet!)

When my daughter received her phone back, she received this text from Mom:

"Sry Cnt tak U n e wher n e tim soon  I hav a LIF  luv Mom"