S2 lives in Eastern Europe, 5000 miles away. He and I text almost every day (sports, articles, silly memes). via WhatsApp video chat about every two weeks. H is in on the video calls and some of the texts. This is far, far more contact than we had in college.
S1 is 3,000 miles away. He doesn’t initiate contact too much, though is happy to chat when we want to video chat. He likes his boundaries, though when he and I get the chance to talk alone in-person, he’s very conversational.
There’s a lot of personal stuff both tell me that they’d never tell their dad.
S called me on the way to the ER tonight and on the way home. He is ok, a runner with a probable strained muscle. But I realized how much I appreciate out talks, which are personal and wide ranging as well as the fact that he lets me know pronto if anything is amiss. He was in Asia for 3 years in his 20s, before technology was as adept as it is now. We rarely talked, mostly emailed. So I appreciate the ability to talk while driving and so on. He is keeping up my requirement to send pictures of the baby weekly.
Ds call every week or two, but we exchange texts every few days for the most part.
As I worked every other weekend since they were tiny, my ability to be available anytime for calls and chats is new to them as well as me in retirement. Maybe we can get on a schedule after all these years!
Kids are 32 and 29. We talked to them once a week on Sundays starting in college. We’d talk anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes. That continued every week even after college, though the older kid didn’t always answer. Though we usually could chase him down if he didn’t answer at the usual Sunday time.
After Covid we switched to Discord and often played games. Currently we’re talking once a week along with SIL, BIL and usually my nephew. My oldest doesn’t always show up and usually doesn’t talk much. (Pretty sure he’s multi-tasking when he does!) We generally manage to get him if he doesn’t show up. We just like to know he’s alive.
DD1 3-4 x a week when in college. Usually when she was walking somewhere. And 4-5 x a week texts. Shes now 26 and lives with her boyfriend. She calls about 2-3 times a week. She is working at home during the pandemic. Called and texted more during lockdown when there was nowhere to go.
DD 2. 1-2 times a week in college and now. She’s a much more independent person by nature. She’s 24. She lives alone but is a nurse so she had more social interaction during lockdown. She has a boyfriend and will stay at his place for days at a time but has no issue calling when she’s there.
I almost never initiate calls.
Oh and my husband will go a long time without talking to them! He’s just not very chatty. He and the younger one spoke maybe 5 times her entire 4 years of college! They love him but they just don’t feel a need to chat with him much. The older one who works in a manner that closet to him ( large corporate office, engineer by training) talks maybe once a month. The nurse only when she has a question about her insurance.
My kids rarely initiate calls, unless they have a specific question. They do thank me via text for gift packages I mail them. Either we or they will call if something needs to be discussed but texting seems to be the best way to reach both of them.
I’d guess we chat maybe a few times a month. If D is helping me with a project, we may communicate more often. My kids are 31 & 33 but have been like this since they left for college. I told them if I don’t hear from them about credit card charges on a mutual card, I’d dispute them, so that got some contact and response.
When they’re home, D is generally much chattier than S. I’m fortunate they visit at least every year and during Covid, both sheltered with us for newly a year—it was great being all together for that time.
We have a family What’s App chat and we usually hear something at least every day or two. H and I also each have individual chat threads which each of them. Although I was (by far) the more hands on parent when my kids were growing up, they tend to reach out to H a lot now.
Like some others here, I’m not a phone person and neither is S. D calls about once a week and it’s nice to talk with her. She is pretty chatty.
Hope this continues as we text with each kid frequently and try to talk on the weekends. S and I text during games as we root for the same teams and it’s almost as if he’s in the room watching with me. Really fun. D goes MIA for a few days but then we have a nice catch up text session while she’s on the train or something like that (lives in NYC).
Tech has made it so much easier to communicate while they live far away. I’m not a huge techie but i like this aspect.
I think a key (even to me as a 62 year old calling my 88 year old mom I feel this) is NOT to make the call like a report or a confessional. And to make it a “serve and return” call - so both parties sharing stories/news/information. When I call my mom I still feel like I have to “report in”. No fun!
Keep active so that you have stories and experiences and discussion to tell - more than “well, the garbage disposal went out this week…”
Also if I want to call any of them I usually text first to see if it’s a good time. Or ask them to give me a call when they have time!
I agree. I will give my Mom credit. When I first got married we had the obligatory Saturday morning phone call. I hated it. I finally told her after several years and we stopped. I admit we don’t call very often but now with texting and emailing, we do that fairly often. I think the weekly check in might be from older generations when the long distance phone rates went down? I dunno.
But I will say that kids (or adults) who don’t call or chat every day… it doesn’t mean they love someone less or aren’t close. I love my kids and my parents dearly and will do anything for them. I feel like we are really close. But I have no need to talk to them every day or even every week. As long as I know they’re happy I’m good. It takes a lot for me to be lonely, though I admit I do like texting. I like that connection. But if it didn’t exist, I don’t think I’d call anyone more often.
My 20 year olds preferred method of communication is Snapchhat. A few times a week I will get a picture of part of his head and the ceiling. But hey, I know hes okay. He calls maybe once a week or two typically coming or going from work.
None of us are big phone call people. We see our S and DIL every few weeks and talk on Zoom the other weeks. Older D has been wfh for 18 months so she’s pretty chatty on texts 3 or 4 times/week. Calls if she has a question about food or finances. Sends lots of dog and garden photos. Younger D has resumed seeing clinic patients in person and does vaccine and testing pop-ups weekly so she’s not missing f2f contact. We get texts if she has a photo to share of hiking or activity. Usually every week or 2.
My H calls his mom every week at the same time. She’s over 90 and increasingly isolated with the pandemic. Calls last about 15 minutes. I talk to my parents once or twice a week and my sister two or three times a week. Since the pandemic started we have weekly virtual happy hours weekly with 3 different family groups and will probably continue that going forward. Technology has brought us all closer together (we live 1200 miles from any of them except our son)
I have a friend whose mom would pile on the guilt about how infrequently she called. She finally fixed the issue by just calling her on her drive home from work each day. It’s a short commute - not even ten minutes - so they aren’t protracted conversations, but it has made her mom so happy that my friend does this.
@deb922 - I hear you on the keep active/busy so you have things to talk about. We are reasonably active, but everything we do is recurring, so I do feel like we often don’t have much to say. One thing we usually do is text ds the trivia questions we miss from our weekly trivia nights. And, we do also chat about college football. His young life is far more interesting than ours, though. I do want to be mindful that I am not expecting a, “report.” Not exactly sure how to not make it feel that way, but I am taking note of this insight of yours. Thank you!
Since we each watch mom a day a week, most of us don’t call her and just have 2 ongoing threads—one is smaller—the sibs and one or 2 ILs, while the other also includes anyone who wants to be on it—spouses, sibs, next generation (our kids, nieces, nephews). Both threads are fairly active and if there is something that are kids just want to discuss with us, we have individual texts or a thread with H, me and one or both of them.
S is most interested in mail received here that’s addressed to him, so we snap photos and text them to him.
There is good reason that we call our son WhoBoy (which is easier to say that _Who?). Daughter is a little better, answers most texts (especially if I happen to share my day’s 5k running time, since she has been my exercise cheerleader).
About once a month we do family Zoom, sometimes revolving around a birthday or holiday. I’d love more interaction, but I remind myself that it is OK to have busy, independent kids. At age 30-ish, they have more interesting things in their lives than their worry prone mom.
DD age 23 calls a couple of times a week and often it is for a couple hours or more. Not always talking, but just having each other on speaker phone, doing our thing and chatting as if we were in the same house. She has a roommate who’s gone a lot and her BF is 9 hours away so she has plenty of time for idle chit chat.
DD age 20 at college calls maybe once a week for chatting, more often if she has a question. Calls can be over an hour as she likes to tell me absolutely everything but less likely to have extended silences on her calls.
Generally they initiate the call- if I see they are home they might still be busy with friends over, but if they see I am home they know I am probably doing nothing! DH will call them if he’s bored in his truck.
We all have Snapchat streaks with each other and a snap group.
This is SO important. # of conversations/texts is not an indication of love or closeness! Every family and/or family member operates differently!
If you feel like you’d like MORE contact instead of guilt tripping, consider ending the conversation with “thanks so much for the chat - I love hearing what’s going on and sharing my stuff too!” Like make a point to be grateful for the time and energy - whether short or long and keep it fun!
Actually this makes me feel a lot better. Sometimes I feel like I have the only children who aren’t attached to me all the time.
We’ve gone through times when the kids called all the time and times when communication is more sporadic.
They both work full time, both have significant others, my daughter is working full time and taking 2 graduate level classes right now. I think she only has her project left after this semester but this semester has been very busy. My son has a pregnant wife and he’s not the great communicator at any point.
I call my mom once a week. My sister hardly ever calls her, moms alone now so I feel a sense of obligation to check up on her. It’s not a chore.
My mil only calls me, not my husband her son. It’s my big pet peeve. She apparently doesn’t even know his number. I know she’s older but she has a tendency to go on about her life without listening to what is going on with ours. I will communicate through my son and not my dil because it really bothers me so much. My husband rarely calls his mom and I don’t call her either. My husband never chit chats with my mom so I don’t really feel an obligation to communicate with his. I will talk to my mil when she calls but I rarely initiate it unless I need to ask something.
I’m another one not fond of talking in the phone but understand that it’s how the generation above me does. So I will.
When I left for college, I apparently didn’t call home for a month.
Our children are 28 and 31. Both live with SOs. ShawD calls me or ShawWife several times a week. She is intensely social (as is ShawWife).
ShawSon we talk to about twice a week, but sometimes only once a week. He is a co-founder of a Silicon Valley venture-funded startup that was only growing at 10% a month and they were pushing to double the growth rate. He is working a lot, though he stops to watch football games on Sunday. He’s usually tired when we talk to him. We don’t expect much more than once a week. He is engaged to his SO, and ShawWife and she text every day. She is really happy to be joining our family (and we are happy she is joining as well).
I now call my 97 yo mother daily. She really likes a daily call. ShawWife calls her mother closer to twice a day.
D1 - we text daily, sometimes extensively, and talk maybe once a week.
D2- sporadic texting - either something practical, something newsworthy, or something funny, and talk every 1-2 weeks.
I have one surviving parent who doesn’t get out much - we probably talk 3-5 times a week, but generally short calls.
I much prefer telephone over video calls because they are so much a part of my work life now.
