Yikes. I failed the "How Well Do You Know Me?" quiz that my son put on his Facebook page. It was a quiz of about ten questions and had four possible answers to each one. Simply pick A, B, C or D and get your results instantly.

I was instantly aghast. My 13 year old son, Sam, just laughed it off and pointed out that his favorite teacher got the highest score so far. Also, my husband did better than me on the Facebook quiz. In fact, everyone did better than me.

I laughed along with my family but felt horrible inside. How could I not know the answers to such easy questions on how well I know my son? I narrowed down the reasons to these two:

Work

Work is so stressful right now. I am not an Engineer but I provide support to a group of Engineers who have at least 20 to 25 private and public projects going. The paperwork is astounding but I do my best. It takes long hours though and I ended up going in to the office on Saturday. The upside is they are all such a great group, they make the work day enjoyable.

Limited Time at Home Together

Of course. We all have our own interests. Sam is an outdoor kinda guy and this summer finds him out at the basketball court, swimming, jogging or hanging out with friends. I am out at work all day so I like to hole up at home after work, writing and reading or watching the news.

The Resolutions?

How should I resolve this? Well, I can't quit my job and hang out with Sam. That's fiscally irresponsible and with what that kid eats in a course of a day, I need to work to feed him. He would probably eat a whole box of Cheerios if I let him. And I'm pretty sure he grows overnight, every night. I'm thinking of renaming him asparagus. But until my husband gets back to work full-time, I have the primary responsibility of financial support to the family.

Also, I could set aside time to hang out with Sam when I'm at home. Yeah, I'm sure the kid would prefer to hang out with me instead of his friends...I'm not that naive!

So I've come to the conclusion that when we are together, I need to listen better and maybe ask a few more questions about his day. Although we all eat dinner together every night, we engage mostly in idle chatter, nothing too specific. I'll try to do better in that area because time goes by so fast. He'll be a Freshman in the Fall and pretty soon, off to college and I'll never get this time back.

I've got to find a better way to balance, I guess.

By the way, Sam's favorite color is red. I didn't know that.