Any parent who has read text messages on her son’s phone recognizes a peculiar phenomenon: the words aren’t the same as he uses when he speaks. He uses acronyms and shorthand: OMG, BTW, GTG, LOL, 2nite, or msg. But odd language doesn’t stop with onfusing combinations of letters and numbers. Sometimes it gets downright seedy.

Many parents choke when they see profanity on their ten-year-old daughter’s phone or naked pictures on the screen of their fourteen-year-old son’s phone. Parents get scared because they wonder if these are the tip of the iceberg or a brief aberration from the normal texts. Their concerns are legitimate because the truth is, kids have the ability to live and function in a very private world where their parents aren’t allowed.

And the isolation that parents feel only begins with cell phones. Our kids are on computers at school and literally millions of people online have access to them. Virtually anyone can say anything that he wants to our kids at anytime, and we won’t know about it. Besides receiving profanity, many kids use it when communicating electronically leaving parents to wonder, why would my eleven-year-old sensitive, shy, and mild-mannered daughter receive and send text messages…