Texting friends has taken the place of passing notes in the hallway, even in schools that forbid using cell phones during school hours. Pew Research indicates that more than 75% of kids between the ages of 12 and 17 have their own cell phone. According to a study by Nielsen in 2010, the average teen sends and receives well over than 3,000 texts each month, nearly 40,0000 each year!!! What are our kids saying, and to whom? Texting has its own language. How many of these do you know?

BRB - be right back
A/S/L - age, sex, location
IDK - I don’t know
LMK - let me know
BF (GF) - boyfriend (girlfriend)
F2F - face-to-face
PIR - parent in room
PAW - parents are watching
POS - parent over shoulder
P911 - my parents are coming!
WTGP - want to go private?
NIFOC - naked in front of computer
8 - oral sex

While some of these are pretty innocent, others should raise some serious concerns. When our kids leave the house, we ask where they're going, what they're doing, and who they'll be with. I think it's important to ask those same questions when our kids venture out into an online neighborhood. As parents, we get to set the rules for cell phones, texting, and internet use. If your kid is getting ready to have a cell phone, consider signing a contract with your kids. This Cell Phone Contract, posted on Radical Parenting ("parenting advice written by kids"), is a great one with incentives and consequences already built in. If you see a text but you don't know what it means, try this Texting Translator. And if you're really concerned, type "text message monitoring" into a search engine to learn about software that will allow you to monitor the messages your child is sending and receiving.