I know *technically* we're not supposed to read our children's diaries, and some would say we should stop checking their phones at some point too. But let's say, 100% hypothetically, a parent should somehow stumble unsnoopingly upon something like the phrase above, would there be a tinge of guilt? A stab of pain?

 

Even the most distracted or disconnected mom knows deep down, and not nearly far enough into the back of her mind, that she is supposed to be the first parent ever to elicit a coveted claim from her teen's lips: "Nobody understands me better than my mom does." And yet, here most of us moms are - guessing, reading between the sighs and the shrugs, interpreting the Whatever! and the Not now, Mom! like a hostage negotiator. Because it seems like lives could depend on us getting into their heads, doesn't it?

 

I know that mothers of teens often resort to the interrogation of their teen's best friend, their teen's teachers, their teen's coach, the youth pastor,...