There was an amusing Facebook post going around that I just had to save. When something I read is strikingly self-descriptive, it finds a home in my gallery.

The picture is a pie chart, mostly pink, with a thin blue slice making a small wedge. The key indicates that the colors correlate as such: Pink - You are dead or dying. Blue - You are in the middle of something and can’t pick up your phone.

The title of the chart is “What Your Mother Thinks When You Don’t Answer Your Phone.” I laughed when I saw this, and I discovered that many of my peers who are also mothers got the same kick out of this post. In reality, we were laughing at ourselves and reveling in our discovery that we were not alone in our thinking. Apparently, I am not the only mom who gets that little pang of anxiety when calls or texts to my children go unanswered!

But given the times we are living in, how can one not wonder all the time if their children are really OK? Thankfully, every time my children - all young adults - have not answered their phones, they were simply too busy to pick up. And then they would forget to call back when able. When my daughter was a freshman in college, there was a three-day turnaround on a phone call to her. I am not sure she would have ever called back, except that I called her RA to ask him to please look for her. She was so humiliated that she never ignored a call from me again. Yes, my heart has skipped a beat on more than one occasion. But thankfully, my kids were always in the preoccupied zone.

I have learned over the years that you cannot worry about everything. One can only control so much. But I still worry. I worry because I have heard the stories and felt the pain of parents whose unanswered calls fell into the pink range. Drug overdoses, alcohol poisoning and apparent suicides among young adults have become all too common lately. Parents talk about not having noticed the signs or changes in their child. A parent of a child who took his own life shared that she had absolutely no reason to suspect that he was so despondent. This worries me. What signs might I be missing, too?

I do know that communication is extremely important. Listening - just listening - to children is a powerful tool in helping them become resilient and feel supported. But we often are so busy that we don’t take the time to talk, listen or observe. Kids don’t want to disappoint their parents, and parents don’t want to intrude on their kids. No wonder we miss so much.

I recommend that all parents have this conversation with their children before the challenges of the teen years come along:

Know that you can come to me and tell me anything. I may not be happy and I may not agree with you. I may even be disappointed, but I will get over it. I will not criticize or react; I will just listen. There is nothing too “bad” or serious that we can’t fix together. I will always love you no matter what. There are times when I will check in with you, too, if I am concerned about your mood or behavior. Please listen to me and talk with me. I am here for you.

Make sure you are taking time each day to talk with - and more importantly, listen to - each child. This is a key ingredient in the recipe for healthy youth development. While the family is just one of the many influences on a child, it can serve as a safe haven, a place of refuge from a much crueler world.