How often do you expect to hear from your child away at uni?

[CrikeyDozes]

My eldest hopes to go to uni on the other side of the country this autumn providing she gets the A-level results she needs. I will miss her so much.

Shes not great at texting and calling when out but I’m keen to establish a good contact pattern while she’s away. I don’t want to put pressure on her though - my mum wanted me to call daily and it used to feel a lot sometimes.

How often do most people hear from kids at uni and how do you gently establish good patterns of contact?

It varies - sometimes there is no contact at all for several days - at other times there is quite a lot of contact over several days. Plus my ds is in the family iMessage group and keeps tabs on us how well we are looking after the cats in his absence that way.

He is also at home about half the year which is nice as the university holidays are long.

I got a morning and a night eveey day.

We talk to our 23yo 2-3 times a week. Text about 4/5 days a week. They are studying overseas, so we don't see them oftenm

19yo calls most days and is home most weekends and all holidays.

Snapchat every couple of hours! Absolutely no issue with her being independent and getting on with her own life, much of it is the cats (from me), her food she's made, shopping hauls, funny stuff that's happened etc.

I would hate that. I hate constant messaging to and fro. I would rather have a proper telephone conversation every now and again and be done with it. I work and don't have time to keep responding to messages.

DD and I are close BTW.

We ignore if it's not convenient Rampant, though I don't generally find it a problem. If there's occasionally anything that needs urgent attention we'd use text messages to differentiate from the general chat.

Our DD is 2nd year student atm. We have family WhatsApp but I WhatsApp her separately too. Silly memes or photos of the cats etc. We normally videocall her on Sunday evening and watch Task Master with her then chat in adverts/before/after etc. Works well tho my DD not a fan of phone calls. Think longest we haven't seen her has been 5 weeks so not too bad. My DD is a quiet introvert with some social anxiety too so the 1st term was hard for all of us really. Good luck to your DD OP - hope she gets the results she needs 👏💗

I left it up to DS to chose to contact me, I don’t see the point of saying he has to ring once per week or whatever you think a “good contact pattern” is.

I get weeks with no contact but sometimes I will get a few phone calls a day. We text more frequently but again there could be weeks between contact.

I have colleagues with DD of a similar age to my DS and they are in almost constant contact whilst away at uni. Constant WhatsApp messaging, daily video calls etc Which would drive me nuts but is what they want.

I hear from DD pretty much every day, mostly texts, but often FaceTimes (normally right at the point I’m getting my head down for some work). She’s bored a lot, has a great circle of mates there but between uni work and work work, they all have different schedules that only seem to match up late at night/early hours of the morning. So to alleviate boredom I seem to be the one on call, so it’ll be a FaceTime while she cooks her tea or while she does her makeup.

I tend to get debriefs after nights out, usually with one or two of her flat mates joining the call and them all shouting and laughing over the top.

Having said all of that, neither of us have any qualms about winding a call up with a ‘right, you’re boring me now, I’m off’ or a ‘is it important? I’m busy’.

It’s all led by DD, but I do also have BeReal. which I downloaded in advance in case I never heard from her.

My son is just finishing his first year, once he was settled, occasional phone call, a few texts a week, usually about football and F1!
He's busy, works 12 hours a week, does sports, on too of lectures. I miss him but happy that he is happy.

3 of mine are studying in different countries.
They have different patterns of communication but I insist on “proof of life” at least once a week.
A photo of the dog gets a quicker response that “How are you?”

I don't expect to hear, but we are pretty close, so generally chat once a day, and have family what's apps on the go continuously. My elder daughter was less, maybe two or three times a week, but that's continued even though she has left home and now working.

I have 2 daughters finishing uni right now. They are both very different.

DD23 gets in touch on an "I need...", "could you..." basis. If I don't hear from her for a couple of weeks I put pics of the dog on WhatsApp and she will respond. She has finished uni, still don't have a clue what her plans for the future are, but she hasn't asked her dad to fetch her stuff back here... so who knows...

DD21 is more of a homebody and has mapped out the next year, is in touch at least twice a week. Sometimes phone, sometimes WhatsApp.

What we found good was setting up whatsapp... a family one for the 4 of us. And one for each of us with each of the other. So I have one group one with all, and with DH , Dd21, Dd23. And we all do that. Sometimes they want to "chat" to different folks for different stuff.

My 2 know that if I send pics of the dog, I'm wanting a response (never more than every couple of weeks) . So you could have a "code" set up...

@BeyondMyWits our cats are "on" our family whatsapp group and they send her a selfie once every 7-10 days and that usually elicits a response from the DC so I know they're alive and thriving! 🐾😉

When ours go I am expecting one mid week text reply to the many "are you still alive" texts with "yes"

When they need money hence giving them monthly allocations

When they are coming home list of food to buy

Just pour I did when I first moved out and had the beginnings of a great new "adult ish" life at uni.

So once a week tops! Absolute tops and that will be a message

I use Touchnote to send DD postcards from her cat a couple of times a term 😁

"how do you gently establish good patterns of contact?"

Who decides what constitutes a "good pattern of contact"?

What's good for you might not be good for her and vice versa.

I think you need to be led by her.

I went in the late 90s. Called my mum a couple of times a week, whenever I fancied a chat. My dad insisted I call him and his wife once a week, on a Sunday, at 6pm and would get annoyed if I didn't. Needless to say this became a huge pain in the ass, he had no appreciation that I had a life and a course that may be happening at 6pm on a Sunday.

That lasted maybe a term, and then dwindled to maybe monthly. My contact levels with my mum, who hadn't tried to "set patterns", didn't.

We had no regular contact. Rang/texted/emailed when there was something to say.

I would definitely let her lead it and definitely don’t pick a set time for a phone call. Her schedule will be wildly different to yours I imagine, probably getting up later, lectures at various times of the day, possibly a job somewhere, activities/studying/parting in the evening. Setting a time would mean her having to turn down social events if they clash or having to keep cancelling/changing the time which will leave you feeling second best. In shared halls it can be awkward to make a call too as you’d have to leave the group and shut yourself in your room where the walls are so thin they’ll still hear everything, or go out for a walk. Just send messages semi regular (probs once or twice a week) so she knows you care but aren’t nagging and see how it goes.

My baby is leaving for uni soon and I'll maybe be happy with two or three calls a day. One an hour would be acceptable too!

But honestly I don't know. I would like to think that she'll stay in regular contact. We talk every single day here at home and are great friends so who knows. She's a very responsible and clever girl so I won't have to worry about her but it's myself I'm worried about because I'll miss her so much

Dd - hardly any contact

Ds - multiple texts each day plus various phone calls per week

All 3 of mine are away. I get txts and tiktoks every day. Calls a few times a week. They are great for keeping in contact we have great chats. We get on well and they dont see it as checking in, we love a chat or a funny tiktok. We have a family whqtsapp thats kept going with updates and i know my 3 dds have their own groupchat for stuff they talk among themselves about.
I dont put any pressure on them at all.

We have a family whatsapp group. It allows everyone to stay in contact.

I tend to put something on it a few times a week. Dcs usually answer (dc1 more than dc2) so we can have a bit of a back and forth.
i had to have a conversation with dc1 when he started as communication was really poor. I pointed out that his refusal to do ANY phone call/facetime could be an issue when some serious things were going on (eg I got a serious diagnosis. Not life threatening but not something I wanted to share over a text/whatsapp either). Things got better after that and even better in the second year.

As a general rule though, I’ve followed their lead on the ‘how’, which is:

• text/whatsapp fir general chichat.
• phone call reserved for life and death situations.
• ive added the FaceTime/video calls for anything more serious or needing more complex arrangements.

Can I also just say - do TELL her that you're letting her lead on this. My DM did the same thing when I went off to uni in the early 00s (basic mobiles but no video calls!) and I rang her about 10 weeks in to tell her that I was feeling quite unloved because she never made contact with me! She explained that she didn't want me to feel like she was hassling me to keep in contact but actually it just made me feel a bit out-of-sight, out-of-mind - despite the fact that I was having a really excellent time at uni and was absolutely fine.

Wow, good for her.😀