Communication with the people you love the most is sometimes difficult -- especially if they are teenagers. I'm not sure if it is a privacy thing or a power trip. When they were small they would talk your ear off; and then they reach about 14, and you might have to bribe them with Taco Bell just to find out what time they want to go to the mall.

Although it was inconvenient, I drove the younger son to high school for nearly three years until he got his driver's license. We had moved out of his school district, but he wanted to remain with the same kids. Since he no longer had a bus to ride, I played chauffeur. Actually, it was kind of nice because it was the one time he would tell me what was on his mind.

While each of our four children has similarities, they are also very different. If the older children wanted to talk, they would stand in the kitchen with me. Cooking and talking seem to go together. Why do you think all the cooking shows are mixed with a lot of chatter? It is also good to be slicing, dicing and chopping fruits and veggies when the child tells you it is too late for a tutor. My mom was always in the kitchen -- either cooking or washing dishes. The very act of stirring some soup or scrubbing a pot as the child is telling you who really put the dent in the new car releases special endorphins that keeps Mom using the long-handled pot scrubber for what it was originally intended.

If you are anything like our family, which you probably aren't, you have set records for child spacing. They are nearly 34, almost 30, 24, and 16. Things have changed considerably since the first three were small, and technology has come a long way in the last two decades.

In the old days, the kids would slink to the office if they wanted to use the telephone to call home, hoping someone (meaning mom) would bail them out for the day. If they were allowed to use the phone, and no one was home, they were stuck until the buses showed up at 3:15 p.m. Same way at church camp. They were told it had to be a real emergency if they called home. Once one of them had to be carried from the car after church camp. He had strep and when he said at camp that he didn't feel good, I guess he didn't look sick enough. Knowing him, he would have dragged himself to the baseball field even if he were running a temperature of 103 degrees.

The younger one knows I sit at the computer a lot while I am writing, so she e-mails me from wherever she is to tell me how bored, sick or hungry she is. One day I got a call from our niece in Alexandria, Va., to ask if I knew Carly was sick. She had read it on Facebook.

I'm not sure what teenagers did a long time ago -- say 600 years ago. Can you imagine the teenagers in the 1400s trying to communicate with anyone? No telephone, iPhone or facebook? Actually, at that time, Gutenberg was just inventing the moveable type printing press. The Bible was printed, but the note saying "I am leaving to fight for the Motherland" was probably written with a stick on the dirt floor by the front door.

All of that to explain the new world order. Although three of our children live within 25 miles of us, one is in South Korea. We wondered how we could stand not seeing him and his wife, whom we consider our third daughter, for at least a year. No problem. I am not kidding when I say it is almost like having them in the house. For one thing, there is Skype, where you each sit in front of monitors and talk as if you are in the same room. Of course, sometimes you get caught. One morning I was getting ready for church and my hair was standing straight up and I had no makeup on. They of course, looked fine. It was 9:30 a.m. here and 10:30 p.m. in Korea.

Communication is similar, except I don't talk to them much on the phone. I can e-mail any questions or send him a message on the back wall on Facebook. If I am up at 1 a.m., he is probably through teaching for the day and sitting around on the computer in Korea. He beeps in and we chat. With his little digital camera, he makes videos of places they visit and puts them on YouTube.

Some things never change, however. Although they are older, the two youngest still argue -- except now it is via the Internet. When I posted some old pictures of them recently, some showed the now 16-year-old at age 2 wearing her brother's skates, lying as a baby on his baby quilt, wearing his old "Goosebumps" T-shirt, and playing pool in the basement. Her brother commented, "Buy Your Own Skates," "That's My Quilt," "Get Your Own Pool Table," and "Get My Tee Shirt Off."

She laughed and sent smart-mouthed replies back at him. After viewing one of her pictures at school where she was doing nothing, he asked, "Are you...actually...learning anything there?" She retorted, "Do you...actually...do any teaching there?" Or, "I'm tellin' Dad," if he manages to get her good.

See, it doesn't change. While the two older ones are mostly laughing, they are not above egging it all on and then adding their own zappers.

This new communication reached its zenith when I realized that, as I was commenting on her photos on Facebook, the youngest one was sending me messages from the other side of the couch. "Can we go to Gabe's?" Not the silent treatment from long ago, just a different way to talk.

The best was two weeks ago when I put on my status, "What a beautiful, sunny day the Lord has made." From her bed, using her iPhone, she wrote underneath: "It would be even better if you would carry me to the couch, make me some eggs and tea, and pet my feet."

Dream on Alice. Well, I did fix the eggs and tea. The carrying to the couch and petting her feet can be her dad's job.

Bonny Rushbrook is a freelance writer and mother of four. She writes about the humorous side of parenthood each month in Tri-State Family. She can be reached at scripto@cisinternet.net.