DEAR ABBY: My 15-year-old daughter, "Amy," was recently dumped by text message, and I am extremely frustrated with how to address her tears and heartbreak. Text messaging and instant messaging seem to be the only ways that young people communicate these days. This young man took the coward's way out.
Amy and I have had several heated discussions about it, mostly ending with us agreeing to disagree. My perspective is, when two people are ready to end a relationship, they should face the other person and talk about the reasons why it isn't working. Hers is, "That's just the way we do things now." Any thoughts? -- KATHY IN SPIRIT LAKE, IOWA
DEAR KATHY: You are both right. Communication is a skill that people learn through practice. And I, too, am concerned that a generation of young people isn't learning to communicate face-to-face. It's almost as though there is a fear of intimacy, and the signals that people send through facial expression and gesture are being lost because of over-dependence on technology.
Although "that's the way we do things now" may be your daughter's perspective, my question to her would be, "Now that you know how terrible being dumped that way feels, would you do it to somebody else?"