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How often and how are you in touch with DC in college or school away?


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Just trying to get an idea of what constitutes "normal" here.

 

If you have/had a child in a boarding school (or other schooling arrangement away from home), or a young college child, how often did/do you phone call / email / Skype / however else you communicate/d? Some kind of a contact on a daily basis? A few times a week? Weekly? Long or short conversations (I mean the regular ones, not the necessity-based ones)?

 

:bigear:

Thank you in advance.

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Ds goes to a university close enough that he still attends the same church, so we get to say hi and hug him on Sunday morning. He sometimes goes out to lunch with us and sometimes comes home and does laundry. He or we text when we have something specific to say or ask. Sometimes we comment on each other's FB status. Probably 2 times of contact per week average . We gave him a ton of freedom his last year home and he doesn't feel a need to draw a lot of boundaries, so it's pretty easy-going.

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My kids are young, yet, but when I was in college I rarely spoke with my family more than once a week or less (even though we got along fabulous & I loved them dearly). I'm just not a big phone call person, I guess (and they wouldn't have been big texting/fb ppl!).

 

My dh works out of town 7 months a year or so and the kids and I MIGHT call him e/o day... or every 3-4 days... or whenever I can remember at a time it is convenient to do so... He might call me once a week, if that, on his own - he's even worse about calls than I am!! :D

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Ds goes to a university close enough that he still attends the same church, so we get to say hi and hug him on Sunday morning. He sometimes goes out to lunch with us and sometimes comes home and does laundry. He or we text when we have something specific to say or ask. Sometimes we comment on each other's FB status. Probably 2 times of contact per week average . We gave him a ton of freedom his last year home and he doesn't feel a need to draw a lot of boundaries, so it's pretty easy-going.

 

This is the same situation with our 21 and 18 yo sons. They come home most Sunday mornings for breakfast, then attend church with us and usually come home for lunch and hang out for a bit. We text or post on each other's FB a few times a week.

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My oldest (grad school) and I text about 2x week. Maybe a bit more lately as finals loom. He and dh email about once a week. I like to text because we can pick up and put down as needed. I should delete some of those. I am sure it's taking up space on my phone. ;)

 

My next child attends college and lives at home for the time being. We check speak to each other daily, in person. lol

Edited by LibraryLover
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These responses are absolutely breaking my heart. My oldest dd is a junior and she would like to go away for college. We are very close. I can't imagine only talking a few times a week.

 

Please tell me this isn't the norm for everyone. A few days ago my dd wrapped her arms around me and just cried because she has been thinking about how much she is going to miss our family when she leaves for college.

 

Does anyone have a child away at college that is still close and talk every day?

 

Thanks,

Elise in NC

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It varied. with 1dd, we had e-mail but not cell service so phone calls were maybe once a week or so her freshman year. later, we did have cells, and it varied with what was going on. crisises got lots of phone calls.

2dd got e-mails stating it was polite to let your parents know you were alive at least once a week . . . .usually we heard from her at least a couple times a week. even living here now while attending school and working, there are days I don't see her.

 

I have a friend who knew her daughter would be calling ALL. THE. TIME.

she dropped her off at school, said "we're going to europe for three months. if you need anything call your sisters" (the sisters were well established), and left.

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:grouphug: Aww...Ds (19) is a freshman living away on campus. I knew he would have a hard time adjusting to being away because he's always been a homebody and didn't spend a lot of time socializing. When he first went away I heard from him multiple times a day. Eventually the calls started to taper a bit. On FB I noticed that he was out most weekends with new friends (yay!). He didn't even come home for the first time until the end of the first trimester, which was right before Thanksgiving. Now we chat a couple of times a week. I miss him terribly, but nothing makes me feel better than knowing he is comfortable, has a nice group of friends, and he's making his way at school.

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Does anyone have a child away at college that is still close and talk every day?

 

Thanks,

Elise in NC

 

Our dd is a freshman and so far we have IMed almost every day. I have IM open right now, though we aren't saying much. I shared a link to that lovely OCD cutting board and then we kept sharing links and saying "Oh, look at this one! Isn't that cute!" I have told her good night most nights. We just say "Hi!" and I might tell her what her little brother was up to and what we are doing and I let her share as she desires. I don't feel like a hovering parent. I am just another of her friends, whom she IMs. Today she wanted to Skype for a few minutes, because she had some news to tell me. We don't Skype very often because she doesn't feel as free with it and she doesn't want to disturb her roommate. It also takes more time for her, because once she is on it we can talk for hours. :)

 

I barely talked to my parents at all, when I was in college. It is just different with us. I am so happy to be just mom and not her teacher any more. I am enjoying the shift. I can get more excited or nervous or whatever with her than I could as her teacher. I just keep things simple and don't offer much advice at all. I just say little things like, "Wow! That sounds like a lot to do, but I know you can do it!"

 

It sounds a little weird to me that we talk every day, but it just feels normal as we do it. I don't sign on to IM until evening or even 11pm or later some days. Then most days I let her initiate, if she wants to. Sometimes I will say "Hi!" I try to let her take the lead. If she didn't IM, I would probably send her more emails just to tell her the news.

Edited by Irene Lynn
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:grouphug: I felt exactly the same about my girl. We're really close, but she is now a soph and she still calls multiple times a day. And we like it! I figured she was calling so much last year, as a freshman, because she was so homesick and had a difficult time adjusting. But this year she's calling just as much as last year, usually about small day-to-day stuff, to say good night, etc.

 

A couple of women at church have told me that this is an indication that she's not separating. But I don't think so. She's going to spend the first semester of next year in Kenya. She's separating just fine and her confidence has grown a lot since her freshman year. We are just a close family.

 

Hang in there. The freshman year, for us, was soooo hard. This was partly because she was having such a hard time, not making friends, etc. It was hard to let her go off just to be unhappy. But this year, while I still miss her, she's growing so much. She's in the right place, doing the things she needs to do to become the person she's going to be.

 

Sandy

 

P.S. She just called to say she had meatloaf and mashed potatoes for dinner. She NEVER ate my meatloaf at home! LOL

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I talk to my oldest son several times a week, and there have been times of daily contact for a time.

 

He and I area fairly spiritually connected so if he is feeling emotional I'll get more calls.

 

If it is some thought thing, school thing, history related, he'll call dad.

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ER first went away to college in Fall 2008. Some of you will remember what a basket case I was back then. At first, he/we texted several times daily, and he called home about once a week. After awhile, it got to the point that we texted back and forth about once a day and he called about once every couple of weeks. Now it's his senior year, and he/we text at least every couple of days, usually at least once a day, and he calls when he needs something or when what he has to say is more than he wants to text. His school is 3 hours away, and he comes home about 2-3 times per semester.

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My 20 year old dd is about 9 hours away. We talk on the phone about every 2-3 days. I usually let her call me because of her schedule and when she has time or a break. She is a Jr. but called more when she was a freshman than now. I think every parent has to figure out what works best between them and their kids. Some people will speak several times a day and others will be more comfortable giving their kids more space.

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My son is a sophomore at a college that is about 700 miles from our NC home.

 

Initially we were in fairly regular contact. He asked me to read through his weekly papers for his first year writing intensive seminar. We Skyped maybe once a week. About halfway through first semester, I heard from him less and less. He found a core group of friends and his life took on a new pattern.

 

Email is our primary form of communication these days. I probably send emails a couple times of week, often forwards of interesting things from a newspaper or NPR. Same from my husband. We sometimes hear back from these emails--depending on his level of activity at school and his interest in our snippets.

 

I need to speak to him periodically. Last year we Skyped once a week--now it is probably once every other week.

 

Imagine how thrilled I have been the past two weeks to be in regular contact again! He has been working for weeks on an ethnography project and needs someone with zero knowledge of the subject matter to read parts of his paper. This zero knowledge person would be me, of course. Nice to know that a Mommy is still needed every once in a while!

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Mine is in Richmond, about 90 minutes away. He comes home every 4 or 5 weeks for a holiday or birthday. He hates to talk on the phone, but calls us maybe every 2 to 3 weeks.

When he was a freshman, he went thru a horrendous psychological problem, and we talked a lot, but never every day or e/o.

 

I see him on FB once in a while and he will send me an email once in a while, too--usually a movie trailer or a request for help vetting a paper.

 

He doesn't keep his cell phone on and doesn't have a land line in his apt, so I can't contact him outright, but I can leave a message and he gets back quickly (within the day, usually), and I could always call his roommie if I absolutely had to.

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My son just returned from an LDS mission a month ago. Those last two years and we spoke on the phone on Christmas and Mother's Day each year. We emailed once a week. That is church policy. He will now go to a local university and commute for one semester until his friends return from their missions and they all decide which "away" college they want to attend in the fall (which will still be in state).

 

My dd is at college an hour away. At first, we spoke several times a day. Now it's tapered off to a phone call or a text every other day. She comes home once or twice per month.

 

I love seeing them so grown-up and independent. We're very close, but as they get older, your relationship with your children naturally changes (or it should, unless your one of *those* mothers :lol:). They are becoming adults and don't need Mommy for day to day things. Thank goodness! Makes me feel like I've raised them right.

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My 18 year old is 2 1/2 hours away at college. We talk to him, one way or another, every day. Sometimes it is a simple tweet, sometimes a text to say goodnight, sometimes we skype and leave the laptop on the dinner table so we can have him included in dinner. :D He talks to his 16 year old sister several times a day by text or skype. He is out for Christmas break but his job is keeping him there and we miss him terribly. The 16 year old sister has decided to join him next year at college...I'm still in the decision making stage with that one! Yikes!

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I left home at 16 to go to a residential high school, rarely called home, and continued that pattern through college. Everybody is different, and it just depends on your relationship with your child. I was busy, and it wasn't an issue to call home and chit-chat, nor was there a ton of money for the phone bills.

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We usually communicate every day with dd18 who is a freshman at college. I expect that to continue since that is what she wants. It wasn't that way with my oldest and it did lead to problems. Anyway, I prefer IMing or email but she often wants to call. If she calls, she more often then not talks to her sister or her father since I can't understand phone conversations that well.

 

But yes, we are very close to dd and we expect that to continue but not because of our insistence. It is what she needs right now.

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