Q: How has your counseling and advice changed as the negative aspects of technology have become a new worry for parents? What do you recommend to parents of kids who text constantly but don't want to talk about their lives?

A: Kids who text and touch screens but don't talk are a great challenge to parents, although they may be great communicators to their peers. Generation gaps in technology can be huge, and the guidelines for parents are forever changing. When I surveyed over 5,000 middle-grade students for my 2005 book, "Growing Up Too Fast: The Secret World of America's Middle Schoolers," kids were already reminding me of the technology gap between them and their parents when the parents were in middle school. They claimed that parents didn't "have a clue" as to what they were experiencing on screens. Though generation gaps are often characteristic of adolescence in any generation, the gap is even wider today because of rapidly changing technology. Even the guidelines I prescribed nine years ago would be impossible to implement for this generation of tablets, cellphones and laptops that travel in children's backpacks.

Setting and enforcing guidelines early for children is helpful. Expecting kids to share with you all their passwords and friending adolescents on social sites help you know what their world is like. Taking technology away at bedtime is still possible and at least allows them a good night's rest. Cautioning your children about not sharing real names, addresses or phone numbers in chat rooms and emails protects them somewhat. Making sure your hardworking home is balanced by non-screen family fun can be an enormous protection. If children are motivated not to disappoint their parents, they will be more cautious. Beware of over-consequencing and over-punishing for small problems. We don't want your children to think of their parents as enemies in a battle of wills. Tell your children how wise and experienced you are and how much you love them at least five times a week. They need to know they can count on you in this complex, fast-moving world, even if they know more about technology than you do.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than two hours a day of screen time. You can remind children that these research doctors really have proved that too much screen time harms the brain.

Like children in every generation, your children will grow up and, one hopes, find responsible directions for their own lives. Technology skills are valued in the workforce, so they can't live successfully without them. Technology is here to stay, and learning as much about it as possible will help you stay tuned in to what your children aren't saying.

Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or srimm@sylviarimm.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.