Can you hear me now?

My 14-year-old daughter just returned home from overnight summer camp. After not speaking a word to her for two entire weeks, she spent the hour ride home maniachally checking Facebook friend requests and counting the number of texts she missed that indicated all the exciting things her friends were doing while she was away like walking around downtown and ordering FroYos. I continued to chat away, trying to extract just a little bit about what had gone on the prior weeks but she was not engaging. I wondered if for the better part of a decade she had tuned out my every word.

But then there was an epiphany of sorts. At a block party the next day she actually told me that even though she thinks I'm overprotective at times, she actually thinks that the limits I set for her are probably good ones.

Whaaaaa? She's been...ah...listening? Who the hell would have known? Certainly not me.

I guess this generation is great at multitasking. In my daugter's case, she can be watching Dance Moms, posting something on Instagram, using an app to grossly distort a picture of her best friend and, just possibly, absorbing a kernel of what I'm saying...

I think I heard a choir of angels but I quickly snapped out of it just before she told me I was embarassing her for some arbitrary reason.

That said, I still haven't figured out how to get her to listen enough to make her bed or pick up a wet towel off the floor. Baby steps, mama.