<p>My mom finally budged on our “no texting” rule when I went to school and got unlimited texting on our plan. We text each other throughout the day every day. It’s not a rule or a planned thing, but if something funny or interesting happens we share it. Sometimes we might go a few days without talking just depending on if anything worth sharing happens. That’s just what’s natural for us. I don’t talk to my dad at all until I come home for break unless I have a computer problem. He and my sister are not interested.</p>
<p>My grandma still stops in to visit my mom at least once a week so it is not unusual in our family for mom and daughter to be very connected.</p>
<p>I expect a once a week phone call from my daughter; sometime she forgets and calls Monday or Tuesday instead of the usual Sunday evening. If she has a question for me during the week or news to share she may call or text other times. I don’t call my mom more than once a week, so that is fine with me. My 17 year old son is away for 6 weeks this summer, and I barely hear from him. Occasionally I text him to see if he is still alive, and he will reply he’s OK. I’m not sure he knows how to answer his cell phone when it rings, but he does receive texts and can reply. So when he heads off to college in a year, I don’t expect to hear much from him, and that is fine with me too.</p>
<p>I’m currently a rising senior in high school, and my parents (especially mom) have said that they expect multiple phone calls throughout the day, and that they want to drop in and “see me” weekly/biweekly if I go somewhere within a driving distance (More specifically she was talking about UIUC, we live in the Chicagoland area). Is this normal?</p>
<p>How should I convince my parents that they need to be ok with me contacting them less?</p>
<p>I never really had this discussion with my mother before leaving for college and it went in a horrible direction within the first week.</p>
<p>At first, my mother would call multiple times a day (not 2-3, more like 10-15), and it just wasn’t possible for me to answer every single one of them. My second day of college, I had classes straight from 935-1710 with only very short breaks between each one, and my mother reported me to the university police department for not answering her calls (to this day, I find this absurd, as she had a copy of my course schedule and knew that I was in class). It wasn’t even that she particularly had anything important to say, either. She just wanted to chat/missed me. I was furious, and by the time we actually had a discussion about expectations for communication it was too late - it was when we were screaming at each other over speaker phone in the university police department. The whole issue of communication ended up being highly contentious between the two of us throughout my first semester.</p>
<p>Regardless of her calling the university police on me, I still ended up screening her calls just to maintain my sanity (she didn’t begin to let up on the volume of calls until shortly before Thanksgiving; I didn’t and still don’t feel that I should be spending 4-5 hours on the phone with my mother every day) and so that I would be able to sustain both social and academic lives. She didn’t try that again, though, thankfully. Eventually she took the hint, and we moved down to talking only once or twice, sometimes three times a week if one of us actually needs something. She’s also gotten much better at texting since getting a Blackberry, and the situation is greatly improved now. However, I feel that it’s probably going to end up being contentious again while I’m in France this upcoming year. Pretty sure that she expects daily skype, but that isn’t going to happen since my homestay doesn’t have internet.</p>
<p>Is it normal to feel obligated to communicate a lot with parents out of guilt? I’m the only child (my sister died over 8 years ago) and I feel oddly obligated to make up for the trauma my parents have suffered by keeping in touch with my parents, maybe more than I would really want to. (I’m tired of the constant nagging!)</p>
<p>I’m going to my state school only an hour away from home, partially because my parents wouldn’t let me apply anywhere far away. I kind of feel like they’re creating a set-up where it’ll be impossible to go days without talking. I haven’t been able to discuss anything with them about putting money into a checking account or anything, and my mom doesn’t want to buy anything more than the basics for my dorm because she figures I’ll just come home whenever, buy more things and bring them back to college.
My mom has actually said that she bets I’ll come home EVERY WEEKEND, which is kind of ridiculous because A) I feel like having a life in college, B) what a waste of time driving, and C) isn’t the point of college to go be independent in a new place? I know I shouldn’t feel obligated to do it, and that they’re adults and don’t need me to worry about their well-being, but if I leave them all alone, I’ll feel bad for them…</p>
<p>We’ll probably Skype with our daughter once a week. Maybe on a Sunday night. We’ll figure it out after she settles in and has her class schedule, etc. While it would be ideal to be able to Skype at the same time every week, we realize that things come up. But, we’re going to ask that she at least drops us a text or calls us briefly to let us know she’s busy. Or maybe plan a Skype session for later that night. It will be flexible, but I know my husband really can’t wait to use that toy…er… Skype on a regular basis. ;)</p>
<p>That would NOT work for our daughter and I honestly don’t see myself doing that, either. It wouldn’t seem healthy to be in constant contact with our young adult child who is trying to make a life away from her parents. And, by the same token, we’ll be taking on a new role, as well. That doesn’t mean we won’t be in touch on a regular basis. Just not the way you described. Best wishes with that!</p>
<p>**nuclearpirate99 said:</p>
<p>I’m currently a rising senior in high school, and my parents (especially mom) have said that they expect multiple phone calls throughout the day, and that they want to drop in and “see me” weekly/biweekly if I go somewhere within a driving distance (More specifically she was talking about UIUC, we live in the Chicagoland area). Is this normal?**</p>
<p>I get periodic texts from all my kids (3 will be in college in the fall). There’s no set time frame or anything although I do hear more from my daughter then my sons. Occasionally my “mom radar” will go off if I haven’t heard from one of them in a few days and I will track them down with a “Still alive?” text. I’ve gotten many a humorous response to this. During finals I never hear much at all, just brief texts to let me know they are surviving. A tradition I started that seems to work well for us is every night before I go to bed I text all of them “Good night. Love you.” Most of the time I get a “good night” back, but if I don’t, it’s no big deal. :-)</p>
<p>S1, who graduated this year, emailed about every 5-6 days, longish, chatty, detailed ones about classes, friends etc which perfectly satisfied me. He rarely phoned, if ever. I expected about the same from S2 when he went away last year for his freshman year. Completely different person. He emailed about once a week or less with 3 or 4 lines! That wasn’t enough for me, wondering about placements, casting, injuries etc, as he a dance major. Then he got mono, unbeknownst to both of us, and was calling daily, bone-tired, unwell, homesick and lonely. Anyways, after that we compromised on daily communication of any sort, even a 2 word txt that he’s alive and well would satisfy me. He sometimes misses a day here and there, but it seems to work for both us and we plan to continue this for the coming year.</p>
<p>My first attempt at college was in 1995, and I hated making phone calls (plus, long distance was expensive back before cell phones were ubiquitous). I wrote letters once a week as agreed, with maybe one or two missed. What I didn’t realize at first was that the mailbox I tended to use was also used as a depository for beer bottles on the weekends, and only about half of my letters reached their intended destination. A couple months in, Mom cried foul, and while complaining about the injustice to my roommate, she clued me in. </p>
<p>I moved from DC to NM a couple years ago to save money and minimize SAD, and now I try to call once a week. Dad sees me on Facebook a lot (Mom doesn’t log on that much), and sometimes I email. They don’t text-- I don’t think they even keep their cell phones on 24/7. The time difference makes it tricky to call during the week, so if I’m busy all weekend, I generally just skip a week. Sometimes I manage a call mid-week, but they’re pretty rare. It works pretty well for us and the idea of calling every day horrifies me, but I’m also 33, not 18.</p>
<p>Ah, the lost art of letter writing. When my mother went off to college in 1955, my grandmother asked her to write every week, and she would do the same. Well, 54 years later, they were still writing weekly letters to each other until my grandmother died last November. I have so many memories of being gathered around the kitchen table as a child, listening to the latest stories about the farm and the family as my mom read grandmother’s letters aloud to us. Even up until her death, my mom would pass grandmother’s letters on to me to read to my family. What a treasure they have been! I wish mom had kept all the letters as they would be a storehouse of family and cultural knowledge, but only a very few were ever saved. Doubt that my S or D will ever save my emails/texts for posterity!</p>
<p>Well, not sure how often our freshman D will (or will want to) communicate with us, but we’re pretty sure she will want to do Skype video chats with our 6 month old puppy daily :)</p>
<p>Kidding aside (actually, only half-kidding about the puppy), I like the suggestions for some sort of lightweight daily ping (check if on-line, text message, etc.), then calls/emails/texts as needed during the week, and a Sunday phone call. I also like the idea to let her lead the way in molding the approach, so she does not feel stifled.</p>
<p>S will be a freshman; I think he’ll probably call once or twice a week. He’s not much of a texter or email writer. I think if I haven’t heard from him in close to a week, I’ll shoot him a text to make sure he’s ok.</p>
<p>I plan on sending the occasional care package, and since he’s less than 3 hours away, he’ll probably want to come home a couple of times over the semester. And I plan at least one drive out there combined with some foliage sight seeing.</p>
<p>here’s the sad, sad, truth: I would send care packages to our son, hear nothing from him, inquire, and learn that he had been “too busy” to go pick up the package during the hours that the office was open.</p>
<p>will expect 1 weekly call, no facebook, no skype. i’m just not that into it and with another child at home, a full-time job, etc. It’s plenty and they need to grow up.</p>
<p>We let each child decide how much contact they want from us. Our son decided to call every week and wanted us to come visit him and take him out to lunch every few weeks! We don’t send him mail or care packages because he never checks his mail.</p>
<p>We expect our daughter will not want much contact from us. (We just dropped her off at the beginning of August.) So I am only calling her to get basic information like mailing address, did her tuition check get credited, etc. But I know she likes getting snail mail so I send her silly postcards every few days. But I expect that, at the most, she will contact us once a month if we are lucky! (She is the independent type and does not like to communicate with us.)</p>
<p>Ha! Ha! Ha! Speak of the devil!! She just called! “Mom, tuition is due tomorrow. Did you pay it?” Me: “Yes” Daughter:“OK, gotta go”</p>
<p>as a former helicopter dad (single parent) I decided to listen to other parent’s advice: no news is good news…if they don’t call, they are happy. Therefore, I don’t call unless it’s for specifics and let my 3 kids call me…makes them happy to call when they have something to say…and me not interrupt their class or fun when they have nothing to say.</p>
<p>I text son to tell him to call. He has 3 txts before he gets chewed out for not calling. Since he’s a music major with an odd class schedule and lots of rehearsals, I don’t like to call for fear of interrupting him in case he forgot to mute his phone. I’ve also found it’s much better to wait for him to call because then he usually has something to say.</p>