***As I was sitting down to write this, I opened an e-mail from one of my very best friends.  Her father died unexpectedly yesterday afternoon and I just ask that those of you who pray, pray for him and for his family left behind here on Earth. Those of you who do not pray, I would ask to ponder the eternal truths of this world and examine your conscience.***

Okay, on to the topic at hand; text-messaging language. Sometimes as a parent, the Hobbit finds out things that surprise him, maybe even shock. It has been a good while since he was shown the following bit of information but he knows that many parents do not realize this is happening or believe that their hobbit offspring would not participate in such activities. 

Some hobbit children have been known to use their cell phones in class to text answers to test questions to each other (mundane) and other hobbit children have used the camera on their cell phone to take pictures underneath the desk of the female child (in a skirt) next to them (disturbing).  These issues are generally handled at a macro level and are don’t return for a good while.  But the text language (lingo) issue is more prevalent and harder to deal with because responsible adults are not always aware of what is going on.

So, without further ado, please check out this link to the Top 50 Acronyms Every Parent Needs to Know.  This site, NetLingo, also has a list of statistics that parents should be aware of.  Now, the Hobbit is not trying to scream ‘the sky is falling’; in fact he usually prefers to allow his children to learn most of their life lessons via experience believing that the burned hand learns best. But in some cases, the life lesson can be so dire that the parent needs to be more aware.  And yes, the Hobbit does periodically check the cell phones of his children for these types of messages (he pays for them after all).

Just so you don’t think this message is all dark, NetLingo also has some great resources for learning the normal, generally acceptable text messaging language. It’s fun to learn and causes the children to freak out in the most humurous ways when they find you using it to converse with them.