How much contact do you have with your children who live away at university or similar?

[Gifu]

Weekly calls?
Daily text messages?
A good night text most days?

This is new for us and I'm trying to work out what will become normal.

We get on well and are very close. I'd be happy face timing daily!! But obviously that is not what she needs and I really want her to spread her wings and fly the nest - however much I miss her.

What is typical for you?

We text a fair bit, I send her pictures of the cats fairly frequently. We FaceTime every couple of weeks. Sometimes she phones just for a chat. Her sister is still at home and they text a lot so she tends to pass on bits of information. She also posts on Instagram so I get to see what she has been up to. She has been home a couple of times as well. I know she is having a fabulous time and doing well so tend to leave her to it on the whole.

Mine were usually good texts from my son. He was an infrequent texter. I think we have become so used to the easy ways of communicating we've forgotten what it was like before mobiles and unlimited texts. I went to uni in 1981-86 and wrote once a week and phoned once a week. I think wanting them to text to know they are still alive is a bit over the top. My daughter texts more often but not daily. I see her every couple of weeks and she now lives 20 minutes away. She's working full time and very sporty.

In my experience the happier and busier they are the less we hear from them. I have been known to send the odd "are you still alive text".
We have a family group chat, mostly filled with nonsense and they do tend to engage with that periodically.
But any time there has been a crisis (flats leaking, fires, a smell of gas) we have always been the first one they call. That gives me huge comfort when things are quiet.
Everyone is different. Our children are all very independent but I still feel we are all close.
If the youngest two wanted to call every day I would worry to be honest. I want them to be too busy living student life to even think about us.

daily facetime calls and sometimes more than once a day. She's halfway through her degree and has ASD, so it's just remarkable that she's gone and stuck it out as long as she has! Made some friends in first year who drained her social battery and we get lots more calls this year. She could commute, but says she wants to live away.
I've always encouraged independence and was glad last year when she called less and I could tell she was busy. But it was all a bit much and she's settled into a new groove this year.

My 21 year old son is in his second year at Uni. He'll ring DH or me for a chat about once a week to 10 days I guess. He posts occasionally on the family WhatsApp group chat, but certainly not daily. He has lots of text convos with DH about their football team though 😁. He comes back to London about once a month as he's not too far away, so that's really lovely. Infact he's coming this weekend, yay!

We had a weekly family zoom call plus daily whatsapp group messages. And the occasional phone call. Now that they've both left uni and moved out we've kept up with this habit which is really nice.

Messaging every single day several times without fail. Usually she starts the messaging so I'm not the one bothering her! Call/facetime couple times a week. See her every few months for around 4 days. Might be a girl thing! She's been away for 2.5 years and is very happy

Super close, supportive relationship with my son but spoke and messages less than once a week (often a lot less) when he was away. He was happy and busy, I was happy and busy, we spoke when we needed to and then when appropriate when we wanted to!

@Anotherfrozenpizzafortea it is something you talk about before they go. If you are close now then it probably won't change much.

Ds1 has graduated and Ds2 is now at uni. We have a weekly facetime call with all 4 of us, it is 1hr+. Then throughout the week we also message, share news stuff (like the man being swallowed by a humpback whale that was on the BBC this morning) we have a family group chat for all 4 of us, a just son at uni and me and Dh group chat and personal chat messages too. Any results he gets he screenshots and sends to us. He asks advice on how to cook his steak on the shitty hob in his halls, that sort of thing and sends pics of his dinner that he has made. He is loving his life there but not too busy to spend 30 seconds messaging us which to be honest is all it takes.

We had a talk with both of them before Ds1 went to uni, we are close as a family and I said you can't ignore messages and stick your hand out for money, it is rude, not that mine would do that but it was more mates of Ds1 who couldn't wait to leave home but happy to be funded by their parents to do it. I wanted him to tell them that.

My niece would facetime my sister daily and sometimes a couple of times a day. But she is very comfortable facetiming sometimes it was for a minute sometimes whilst she was cooking, just had her phone propped up by the hob.

Haha the drunken I love youuuu texts are brilliant I also get those from my dd, so sweet. Usually in shouty capital letters :)

Each of my dc have wanted different amounts of contact.

But we also have a few different WhatsApp Groups they are all part of, so I can often see they are still alive when they respond in one of them, even if we aren't directly having a 1:1 conversation.