Carol Band, a humor columnist for Dominion Parenting Media, shares her experience with Skype in a letter in the Boston Globe to a March 3 article about hovering "helicopter" parents.

Band said: "It's no coincidence that the emergence of the helicopter parent has coincided with cellphones, Skype, IM capabilities, and text messaging. The new technologies that working parents use to check up on their kids after school are the same instant means of communication that allow them to monitor their child's mood, minute by minute, long after they leave the nest."

She tells of speaking on Skype on a daily basis with a 20-year-old daughter who is spending a semester in Africa.

Band said: "I think we talk more now that she is on another continent than when she is across the hallway in her bedroom. When she comes home in June, the only question I'll have is 'How was the flight?'"

She makes the observation: "Daily text messaging is a far cry from when the girls in my dorm would line up at the pay phone in the hallway to place the obligatory Sunday night, long-distance call home."