<p>We want him to call daily for the first year. Is that too much? I mean would that make him feel embarassed among the boys, if others call only like weekly? What time of the day does your son/daughter call?</p>
<p>Do you have to pay extra for international calls from a dorm phone? I would call my parents daily first few days, I doubt I would get embarrased. Not long rants about “oh i did this and that” more like “day was great gnight, love you” and maybe a 2min chit chat. </p>
<p>If I go my parents will get Facebooks to help with the communication. I am not sure how keen I am at them looking through my whole FB page, though.</p>
<p>I’m getting a webcam so I can Skype my parents. It’ll be a little more like face-to-face, and it’s cheaper than international calls.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, and skype. Totally forgot! That thing is awesome.</p>
<p>I’d like daily contact too OP. I want to make sure son is remembering to try new things and those first few weeks must be crucial for that. If he has a single he can call on his cell every night without a problem I would think. If they have a roommate it might be tougher…</p>
<p>I think Skype would help a lot.</p>
<p>We’ve gotten a daily call all year. My friend with a 9th grade son at Exeter is lucky to get a call a week. We leave it up to her, but that’s the pattern now.</p>
<p>My son and I speak on the telephone several times per week, but not necessarily daily. We do text every day though! When my older son was a student, he did not have a cell phone (how times have changed since the early 2000’s!). Since it was expensive for him to call daily, we spoke on the telephone once or twice a week and we IM’d every evening.</p>
<p>Last year S called every day.
This year he calls 3-4x a week.
But we email 2-3x a day. His school turns off the phones during study so he only has a small amt of time to call.</p>
<p>My brother used tokbox (like skype, except you don’t have to download anything), because the time difference made it hard for him to webcam or whatever with my dad, so he would record a video on tokbox and it would send like a message to my dad where he would be able to watch it and record a video back. Really cooool :P</p>
<p>We plan to Skype everyday in the beginning. We have already set up the laptops so I can learn how before S leaves. He is already starting to call me the CyberNag and suggested I change my name on here to CyberNag.</p>
<p>“But we email 2-3x a day.”</p>
<p>Good job, hockymom. plus the calls, you are trying to be his calendar or alarm clock or something? :)</p>
<p>bwayjunkie, wow very creative approach! And, DebateMom that’s funny. I think Skype or some other form of IM is definitely the way to go, supplementing the calls, which don’t have to be daily I guess.</p>
<p>No W, he is actually a proctor so he is the one who is in charge of his own alarm clock!
Email just seems to work better for some reason.</p>
<p>Isn’t college also about independence? I love my kids with all my heart, but having them call everyday is not right. I say let them have some space. Once a week seems realistic to me.</p>
<p>ooooooops! I thought this was about college students. I don’t know how I would feel about boarding school students. I guess it depends on the age of the student.</p>
<p>Hmm I’m going in at 16 so I guess it’s different. But I don’t plan on calling my parents every day. Probably many texts and talking 2-3 times a week. At the end of the day I’ll try my best to do what my parents ask, but no guarantees for them :D</p>
<p>My son (15 year old freshman) calls me each night just before he goes to bed. I let him initiate the call – and we certainly don’t require him to call.</p>
<p>It is usually just a quick “things are going great” call, sometimes he has a question or problem, etc. It has been very nice – he calls on his cell phone, so there is no cost (Verizon to Verizon).</p>
<p>Oldest son attends school overseas. He doesn’t have a cell phone nor a room phone. Only a single phone in the lobby of his dorm. We email 3-5x weekly, google chat whenever we are both on at the same time (I have an alert set up) which is quite often and we call him once a week. </p>
<p>I know plenty of people with freshman boys who only talk to them every 2-3 weeks and parents of other students who talk to their students 4-5x a day. I think it is really just whatever is comfortable for the student and parent. My only suggestion is that the phone communication is initiated by the student – and that if they don’t call, you don’t make a big deal about it. Maybe set a base requirement – “call 2x per week” and let them decide what works for them.</p>
<p>Well my parents and I can’t do those 5 minute calls. When we talk on the phone we talk for AT LEAST half an hour. They always have something to tell me. That’s why I probably wouldn’t call them every day.</p>
<p>My d is a 2d year (Lower) at Andover. It’s her second year there. It took my wife and me a while to figure out the frequency-of-communication-puzzle, and I’m not sure we have completely yet!
The first year we spoke with d every day, and emailed several days a week as well. This year, some days go by when we don’t talk by phone. This is more her choice than ours, but we’ve learned to let her take the initiative and call us because the call is generally friendlier, less rushed and more productive that way. We also text and email from time to time.<br>
There are a lot of cross-currents here. D has become even more independent than she was before she left home, and yet she is still in many ways a little girl. She (and we) are happy about her growing independence-it’s one of the reasons we sent her there-and yet she is still just 16.<br>
I think every kid/parent situation is different. Our d has told us of boys and girls who video chat with their parents every day, and others who don’t talk to their parents for weeks on end. So I don’t think there’s any fixed rule or “normal” degree of communication with kids at bs.<br>
To borrow an analogy from a former frequent poster here, we parents are like the mothership supplying oxygen to the aquanauts below. As long as they’re having a blast exploring the reef, examining all the cool fish, we don’t hear from them. But every once in a while they give the cord a tug just to make sure we’re still there!<br>
You just have to feel your way here.</p>
<p>Really, they’re allowed to videochat? We planned on doing that as well, but we read somewhere in the IT literature for the school that webcams (which actually most laptops have now built in), aren’t allowed.<br>
We plan to videochat or talk every evening, at least for the first few months, if only for a few min. Kiddo is hard to “read” by phone, but I can read the face quite easily which would be helpful, especially if I can detect some sort of trouble or unhappiness. I’m sure the frequency should taper off after a few months, but I know my child and the tendency to clam up about problems is the reason we agreed to do that.</p>