Cingular Wireless is giving parents a crash course in texting to help them better understand what their children are saying, or typing, as the case may be.

The carrier plans to host a series of TXT Bees at high schools around the country to encourage parents to start communicating in the "language" of teens, Cingular says. The TXT Bees are set up in a game-show format and pair teens with their parents to compete for a $5,000 scholarship, as well as a $5,000 donation to the hosting high school.

Each TXT Bee involves five parent-teen teams who "text" in a series of wireless communications exercises.

The TXT Bee is part of Cingular's TXT2Connect program launched last summer in conjunction with Dr. Ruth Peters, a clinical psychologist, author and parenting expert for "The Today Show" and MSNBC.

"Texting has become an entirely new forum for young people to communicate with each other," says Cristy Swink, Cingular's executive director of messaging. "To many parents, this new language of text messaging may often seem irrelevant ... we are helping parents interact with their kids through text messaging."

The first event takes place today at West Orange High School in West Orange, N.J. Cingular has additional TXT Bees set up over the next few months in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Florida and Texas.