My experience with both me and siblings in 1980s, and my own 2 (now adult) kids is that it depends entirely on the child and your relationship
if you are close, talk a lot and generally the child relies on you to some extent for emotional support or validation then you’ll continue to get calls, messag3s etc.
if your kids are the “strong silent” types that haven’t been particularly dependant on you for a while now, gone about stuff on their own, self reliant then they’re not going to change that overnight by simply being 200-300 miles away
I see my eldest (lives 250 miles away) like buses - don’t see him for months then rocks up a few times in short space of time…mainly because he has other plans at “home” too or is travelling by. I do pretty all the running with WhatsApp messages and calls. BUT He’s been very independent and self reliant form birth! It’s his nature. When we do tlak he talks for England and we can spend 2 hours on phone. If he calls me I tend to think something is up frankly
other son lives 130 miles away. We see each other every 6-8 weeks, and he calls weekly without fail. But he is far more “needing” of emotional connection to his mum and dad, despite having partner of over 9 years now! He’s the cuddly one, emotionally expressive one.
with my parents I only saw them at holidays. No mobiles in those days, phone box only…guess what, we used this really odd thing of writing stuff on bits of paper and putting it a post box😱🤷🏼♀️. I think I’d get a letter every couple of weeks. I remember I wasn’t good at writing back. I was youngest of 3, to elder brothers. I think they’d “trained” my parents to have low expectations of contact by then🤷🏼♀️🤣🤣. My parents assumed “no news is good news”, assumed I was ok and if I needed something I asked. They were happy to see me when I got home in holidays. But frankly after first 2 weeks I wanted to be back at uni not at home …and I honestly think they felt that too 😱🙄. Young people at uni aren’t easiest to deal with sometimes, you become as parent very dispensable! Thankfully most grow out of that stage and become normal nice humans once they reach mid twenties.
it’s a journey line most of child rearing. If she is well settled at university then frankly her mates WILL become her new “family” because it’s such an intensive period. both me and my eldest dc are still creditably close to our respective university friends and see them as extended siblings . Jeez, I even treat my eldest uni mates as extended family as I’ve got close to them too.
I’d be worried frankly if my dc didn’t get that- or was struggling to make those good strong relationships with friends.
So, you do need to accept that contact may drop from them. With WhatsApp etc it’s so easy these days just to drop a weekly “still ok? Any issue? love and Hugs mum xxx” type message to let her know you’re there and the “rock” she can come to if she needs it. Then call her when you’ve got news etc to share or it’s been 2-3 weeks - but don’t expect her to call you.
if she’s got younger sibs then yes, a family WhatsApp with silly updates, comments, news will help her feel secure and close. I think I’d loved that if it had been around in 1980s. Wasn’t around when my own dc at uni either. But now we have various groups for contact whether it’s me, their dad (my ex who I’m on good terms with) and them, just me and them both, just them individually, and then the wider family on my side including their cousins. Just getting random messages, photos etc helps families stay close when separated by distance, available time and other priorities.
Don’t try to impose discipline or control on this. It’ll inevitably not work and leave you dissapointed and upset. Take it more casually and go with flow…then you can be joyful when she does make the efffort