WOODBRIDGE, Va. - Having trouble getting in touch with your teen? It is a problem long associated with parenting, but, perhaps, with a new solution: try a text message. But when does it become a new way to nag?

Michael Posey says his mom frequently texts him, his dad -- not so much.

His mother even sends the electronic messages when he's home, even when he's right upstairs.

"'Come take out the trash,'" Posey said, recalling a recent text. "'Come up for dinner. ' Stuff like that."

He even gets them at school, where they're forbidden. And where texting teens' cell phones are confiscated.

"Then they have to come and get my cell phone at school," said Sam Fisher, another teenager.

Parents seem to be using text messages for everything, teens say.

"One time my mom got my report card and texted me, telling me I was grounded for two weeks," recalled Jessica Purcell.

Daniel Stroup says his mother uses texts to nag him.

"It'll be like, 'Come home now' And I'll be like, 'OK, I'm coming' and then I'll be like walking in the door and I'll get a message: 'Come home now'," Stroup said.

Daniel's mother admits she likes to text him

"I text him, 'Time to come home'. 'Are your brothers with you?'" Wendy Stroup says, adding she only sends repeat texts "Depend[ing] on whether he comes home the first time I text him or not."

Daniel says it amounts to 'nagging.' Wendy, of course, disagrees. "I don't, I don't [nag]," she whispers in an interview.

Studies show teen-parent texting is becoming more common. A recent Pew Internet survey found 38 percent of teens send text messages every day. A poll for the carrier Cingular found 48 percent of parents learned texting from their child, and 63 percent say texting actually improved communication with their teen.

The cell phone companies know a marketing opportunity when they see one. There are family plans that offer texting dictionaries for parents who aren't caught up on the lingo.

Liz Holmes writes the parenting blog 21st Century Housewife at Blogspot.com. She's says texting takes away the tension and the back talk.

"You can't hear a raised voice in a text," she explained, "so that allows there to be a little more emotional distance between, 'No, I really think you need to come home' or 'Have you thought about what's going on at that party.'"

But for Daniel Stroup, it just seems like another way to nag.

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