To expect my son who lives in New Zealand to facetime regularly

Oh I hate video calls and my mother insists on them for the children’s birthday and I cannot wait to get her off her phone. I don’t mind a normal chat call but I do not like video calls at all.

I’d just try calling him once in a while don’t make it a big deal and obligation.

People like to communicate in different ways. At the minute you have an easy going whatsapp group where family news is shared and views exchanged. Sending a letter demanding regular face to face contact will likely have the opposite effect of what you desire and kill that relaxed interaction stone dead.

I would try suggesting it on an ad hoc basis, rather than scheduled monthly face-time calls and/or putting more effort into the whatsapp.

What do you want to talk about? People and places and things that neither of you know or care about particularly. Do you have exciting lives to relate?

The weekly zoom calls we had during COVID were so excruciating I wouldn't wish them on anyone frankly.

Irregular and spontaneous is better I find. Things will change when children come on the scene.

It sounds like you’re not very close and like he’s not especially interested in maintaining much of a relationship.

I think you maybe need to accept that you’re never going to have the relationship with him that you want. He lives on the other side of the world and has settled there for a reason.

This. Planning the next trip and being proactive as another poster suggested means you are interacting from your timetable and POV, not theirs.

I’ve experienced this from both sides. Letting go of beloved DC is an act of love and faith in them as autonomous adults.

I would t write a letter or start talking about his childhood unless you think there is something you need to address. Just ask him. Say “we won’t be here forever DS1, how about we make time for a video call once a month?”

Helpful 🙄

I lived overseas for 10 years with a 5 hour time difference which was hard enough. Before having a kid I'd probably call my parents for a quick catch up every 10-14 days and send a quick email in-between

NZ being a 11-13 hour difference (depending on time of year) is really difficult. My best friend lives there and we're limited to my Friday eve - her Sunday night for a call, which often collides with other weekend plans etc

I wouldn't write a letter, I think just reiterate how nice it is to hear from him when you do speak / FaceTime

I think you are making a connection between his childhood and adult behaviour that he won’t see. This is his personality. You trying to link who he is to the way you behaved in his childhood is incredibly ego-centric and implies he has no personality or agency of his own.

A letter like that would probably make any recipient either angry or bemused at your self-centred obsessiveness.

I think you need to recognise that he is his own person and learn to respect him and his choices accordingly.

My mother in law was very demanding when my husband left home. We were living a 5 hour drive away and would come home every 6 weeks. She would never make the journey. When we got there she would complain that she didn't see enough of us, try and delay us when it was time to get back on the road home. Complain if we stayed at my mum's. Complain when I was 6 months pregnant that I didn't want to eat her spicy food that my husband had already told her I couldn't tolerate. It was just complaints, and demands for more phone calls. We were working full time and felt she had little understanding of our situation. My husband was a very attentive son, but something just broke in their relationship. He sees his mum once a week now as she lives round the corner. It's a duty.
In comparison my mum who also lives in the same town as my husband's mum used to make us more positively welcome. It's lovely to see you, thank you dear son in law for driving all that way. Are you sure you have the energy to come down this weekend you sound tired? Used to tell us to bring washing if needed as we would not be at home. Made us a cake to take home, a bag of home grown veg, encouraged us to leave on time to miss the traffic. I know she missed us just as much but she loved us enough to give us space. She and I, and my husband have a much warmer relationship now, and I phone her or see her daily since she moved close to us.
Mother in law and my mum both live 10 mins away.
You may have to give your son space to be able to come back to you. I'm sorry, I have boys and I know they are less good at keeping in touch than girls, but I know pulling them closer won't help.
Tell him how much you love to see his face, love to hear his news even if mundane, send him a postcard from home, his favourite chocolate bar, a photo of somewhere you used to go when he was a kid, and rebuild that relationship before asking for more from him. He has to want a relationship with you.

Phones work two ways.

If you want to chat to him, give him a call. I am living in a different country from my parents and I get this all the time from my mum, the burden always on me to call, to maintain the relationship, to make the effort, it’s so one-sided - it would be nice if she could want to reach out to me for a change.

Get DH to mention it in the group WhatsApp

keep it casual

@CloudBuster66 I live in NZ and my partner is in Europe. We whatsapp constantly and I usually call him to chat on my drive to work and then again when I’m in bed about to go to sleep if he has a gap at work.

I don’t typically Facetime bc I can’t be bothered 😂 we might do it briefly to see each other’s faces or if we want to show each other something. Does your son have a regular commute to work where you could call him for a quick yarn? Or doesn’t always need to be an hour long call, just 5 or 10 minutes regularly is nice to check in.

How often do YOU FaceTime home?

how often do YOU initiate a call?

easy question…

YABU

I hate the phone and FaceTime

My dad - now deceased sent all siblings an email stating I was the only one that didn’t call and my email back blasted him as I was the one sibling flying over to spend time with him and I was the only sibling who spent any Christmas with him. So I get that is my example and your family is different but not calling or FaceTime doesn’t equate to not calling it’s just a different version of contact

Have you tried words with friends/ zoom games etc so it’s not just a zoom chat

I live away from my parents with a difficult timezone as well.

One thing I will say is, I didn't realise how much those calls meant to my family until later in life (I'm early 30s now). It wasn't that I didn't care about them or secretly hated them, I was just getting on with life and calling them when it occurred to me, which wasn't often! I felt terrible when I realised!

I agree with the poster who said write a list of things that are happening! My parents always said "nothing" too and my mother later said it was because she didn't feel I'd be interested, but I was. The other thing is, it took a while for my parents to talk to me as an adult, e.g. just a normal conversation complaining about work or something, as they had always "sheltered me from those concerns" before.

The last thing I would add though OP which might reassure you is that the thing that made me pick up the phone more was having a baby. Both my husband and I now call at least weekly and sometimes ad-hoc. So don't necessarily assume you will be cut off from grandparents.

I actually don’t think you are being unreasonable at all. I lived abroad for 30 years and always called home and maintained a close bond with my parents. There is really no excuse not to find the time to FaceTime or call once a month. No one is that busy. It’s even easier now that we have WhatsApp etc. 30 years ago we only spoke once a week because land line calls were so expensive, today is much easier to keep in touch and a lot cheaper.

The time zone between UK and NZ can be really tricky. Can you just tell him you miss him and wonder if you can schedule a regular call once a month? I don't think there's any need for angst, just suggest it.

Do you arrange a time to speak before you facetime or do you just do it randomly? DS1 is keeping his space from you. Call without arranging a time and the chance is he is busy so he won't answer.

Something about the tone of your post comes across as very much living in the past or a heavy expectation of response from ds1. You need to give him the space and clear the expectations you have of him owing you contact. You will push him away otherwise.

I wasn't very close to my parents and we weren't an "expressive" family (they're both gone now and I'm in my late 60s). Mum phoned me every week on a Sunday and I have to say that talking to her was like pulling teeth - I had to do all the conversation and when I asked her what she/they'd been up to or what was new, she'd invariably answer "Nothing".

I've no idea if you make conversation easy or hard, OP - but I really wish someone had advised my mum to jot down a list of things to tell me or talk about during the week and have it to hand when she called. Maybe your son finds the conversations hard?

If he doesn’t want to FaceTime, why would you demand it of him?

While I absolutely understand the appeal of it - to say "whatever the issue is, we can work it out" - it's probably pointless to apologise generally for anything you may have done wrong. If your child wants an apology, it'll be for something very specific. You can't provide that if you don't know what the issue is.

He's still willing to talk, so that's good! If he's saying he's bored by the talks because there's nothing new to talk about, maybe make them LESS frequent, so there is more to talk about when you do get together to (virtually) catch up?

FWIW, I lived in Tasmania for a bit, with my family in Scotland and in California - it can feel like more than a world away. But how the person who has left home and family reacts to that - can I forget about home and family for a little bit while I work out my own stuff/find a new life, or do I feel pulled towards them? - can change a tremendous amount based on circumstances and time passed. If you can, please be open to your children coming back to you in their own time, even as it hurts that they may not seem to need you as much right now.

Some people don't like talking on the phone, video or not, and some (especially men) bond better by doing something together rather than just talking. If he is finding the zooms a chore, guilting him into doing more of them is not going to help. You need to get creative and find something you can "do" together, virtually. Can you suggest something like a family games night, where you play a game somehow via zoom, or something online like bridge or scrabble or even video games? work out together? take an online course together? practice another language together? I seem to remember during the pandemic there were companies set up to facilitate fun social things like this - are any of them still around?

I think needing interaction with someone for your own happiness can feel like a drain on the other person. It makes them see talking to you as a chore or obligation that they are expected to tick off. I would suggest that you start to get excited and caught up in your own life so when you do speak with your son youre chatting from a positive place and not a needy place.
The relationship with my own mum is a bit like this, I would be happy to phone and hear about what she’s got up to, but i don’t like phoning and feeling like her happiness depends on me and i should be responsible for that

I voted YAVU because you didn’t describe a light touch note. You said you’d open by apologizing for “anything you might have done wrong in the past”. That is not light touch. That is telling him that the only reason for lacking calls must be that he’s mad at you and does set the tone of the letter to be emotional blackmail.

A casual note that it would be great to chat more and is there a monthly or every other month time that could work, if he’d like.

I live where my time zone is 12 to 13 hours ahead of my family so, especially with school and work there aren’t that many times that work so does need planning.