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Love it.</p>
<p>10char</p>
<p>At one of the parent talks during freshman move-in days a few weeks ago, the speaker mentioned a student who stood in front of one of the campus web cams and waved at a certain day/time every week. Her mother would watch and then know that she was ok.</p>
<p>whenever i go on long debate trips i always text my mom with a quick “nope, you still have a kid. i’ll be home soon. Sorry you don’t get to redo my room”
she enjoys it</p>
<p>I send my son a quick email with the subject line Dead or Alive?
Most of the time I get a response of “dead”. When I get the response “alive” he always follows it up with a phone call. He must think its code for “can you talk”?</p>
<p>
[QUOTE=lololu]
I send my son a quick email with the subject line Dead or Alive?
Most of the time I get a response of “dead”.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That’s my kind of kid.</p>
<p>I do make a point of appending something like “please reply today” to my texts or voicemails if they’re really important, and he complies. He learned that lesson last year when he didn’t answer his messages for three days, and his mother called the mentor in his residence hall. Imagine being 17 and having your mentor knock on your door at 11 p.m. and say, “Your mom’s on the phone.” Now he knows that when we say it’s important, we mean it. In turn, we never say it’s important unless it really is.</p>
<p>I have sent the “You dead?” text to my kids. That usually elicits a “Nope” as a response.</p>
<p>I have learned to be careful to phrase my text questions so that a one word (or letter as in “K”) response will not work.</p>
<p>On his first long trip by himself - 6 hr. train ride to the “big city”, local train to friend’s town, picked up by friend and taken to another friend’s house, subway back to train station. He’s traveled all his life, but always following mom and dad and I was understandably a bit anxious. I got a message “I’m downtown and still alive.”</p>
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<p>I need that one for my wife.</p>
<p>Me: “Thanks for handling everything at home last night while I was working late. Dinner was really good; you are such a good cook. I love you and could never do this without you. Have a great day, honey.”</p>
<p>Her: “K”</p>
<p>^^^^ you are one of the few men who uses more words than their wife.</p>
<p>I think it is a scientifically proven fact that women use more words than men in any given day (Not that this surprises too many men out there).</p>
<p>My BF will say something like “are you done yet?” after a particularly long winded rant of mine 
But he knows it makes me feel better and he humors me (bless his heart)</p>
<p>OK…I have a good one</p>
<p>I do not Facebook my kids (recent grad and college freshman) because they don’t want me to be in their daily social lives number one ha, but also because I know if I did I would check their pages ummm…often. Oddly enough more and more of the parents of their friends in HS are Facebooking my kids! Yes, our generation is invading Facebook…other parents stare at my kids pages daily, I suppose because they are missing their own kids who are trying to separate from them…ha. My sons do not seem to mind this strange invasion of their old high school friends’ parents… but it is both pretty hilarious and somewhat endearing. Some of these parents are passing acquaintances whose homes my sons have never entered. I pass people at Kroger who are looking at my sons’ facebook pages. The digital era makes it even harder to give up contact with your kids on a daily basis. </p>
<p>I am not sure what I would gain by starting to watch all my son’s old pals on Facebook…I suppose just a delay in recognizing that they are moving on in their new worlds, and another way to hang on to being part of their daily lives…we did grow up in a close community.</p>
<p>Maybe in a year or two I will join up and we will have achieved more distance than six weeks of college --and the boundaries will relax and feel different to all. However for now NOT doing Facebook feels more productive to me in terms of acknowledging my son’s new burgeoning separate young adult life.</p>
<p>I do not expect to talk to them more than once a week, and they are good about chatty Sunday visits on the phone. However, this is somewhat Deprivation in the digital age. I realize many parents are getting daily little missives in various digital forms…and it is hard to even give up a whole week at a time in this era. </p>
<p>OK the funny incident. Recently we upped college son’s text message package…which was very sparse and underutilized in HS and getting heavy use at college… to a complete package for the whole family…since I was thinking that texting might be a less intrusive way to exchange brief messages for all. </p>
<p>Yesterday, I was in the kitchen doing something when I hear Beep Beep Beep…and I think O goody one of my dariling sons is texting me…this is going to be fun…go looking for my phone to read my first text message </p>
<p>and I saw that my freezer door wasn’t shut. </p>
<p>It was only my Frig texting me. </p>
<p>beep beep beep. sigh.</p>
<p>Get a life, Mom.</p>
<p>^^^^ I too didn’t friend college s on Facebook because I knew I’d look at it 6,000 times a day. Now that he’s a sophomore, I feel like maybe we could be friends without it seeming intrusive, but I’m not going to make that move just yet. I hope you saw The Onion video on here about parents on Facebook/Twitter. It was really hilarious.</p>
<p>The interesting thing is that my 13 year old has many friends on Facebook, and had asked to have a Facebook and I finally agreed with the condition that he give me full access/friend status. His friends immediately began to friend me, and all the parents are on their kids pages, so i think Facebook is evolving into something completely different–which means the older kids that want privacy will invent something new and there will be a mass exodus. </p>
<p>I would actually be happy to get a text every single day, no matter what it said!</p>
<p>Mom: “How are you?”
S1: “Adequate.”</p>
<p>We also get the ‘K’ texts on occasion.</p>
<p>I was thrilled when my college freshman son suggested I install g-chat’s video software on my computer. But it wasn’t because he wanted to see me. He wanted to see the cat.</p>
<p>good one vballmom</p>
<p>I think I will go to the kitchen now and reopen my frig door so I can get my daily text message</p>
<p>My son called my DH’s cell last night and he did not answer so he immediately hung up and called my cell. I heard the call and told my younger S that it would be him. He ran my phone to my DH and they talked car repair or ? and hung up. Not even as much as a tell my I said hello!</p>