The other day I was at a local coffee shop and it was Mother’s Day. I heard a lady tell her husband that two of her three children had sent her a message wishing her a Happy Mother’s Day. As she was sitting there, her third child, one of her daughters, who is often in college, sent her a text saying; HMD. She asked her husband; “What does HMD mean?” I started laughing to myself, because I knew exactly what it meant; HMD = Happy Mother’s Day!

Eventually, the couple found out, but doesn’t it seem a bit trite considering that this couple probably had to save quite a bit of money to send their daughter to college or co-sign their student loans? And all you had time to do was send a text with three letters? Yes, all this wonderful technology is used to help people stay in touch, but it’s not real or personal, often pretending to be full of the “LOL” movement, but is it? Does it really mean anything in the end, what happened to a personal phone call? Not that the couple didn’t carry their phone with them in case one of their children called that day.

HMD is all the mother has. Let me remind you that it costs $250,000 to raise a child to age 16, and that’s if you’re on a tight budget. They sent this girl to college, I can’t imagine how much her college tuition is, or her first car, or car insurance, what about gas, or cell phone bill, everyone has to have an iPad on these days. ? I wonder how much those parents spent feeding her all those years of her life, or paying for all her activities, from ballet to tae kwon do and from cheerleading to SAT camp. Surely her daughter in college can do better than that. Sure her daughter has learned a new language we call texting, but she hasn’t learned anything about family dynamics.

Did you take home economics in high school? Will he be able to raise a family of his own? And what happens to her own daughter when she grows up and sends a silly text like that? Apparently the couple had fun, but I’m appalled that this rising generation thinks that’s acceptable. It clearly isn’t, it’s wildly inappropriate and quite frankly not good enough. Navigating through life and interpersonal relationships via text messages, that’s not going to work for anyone in the long run. In fact, I hope you will please consider all this and think about it.