What do you send your children when they leave home? Little presents, funny texts, other ideas?

[loveyouradvice]

With so many of our children heading off as a new academic year starts, I'm looking for great ideas for things to send them... helping them feel loved and appreciated as they start to settle into their new lives.

And yes, I'm unashamedly seeking more ideas... it feels such a rite of passage.

What I've done so far -

• a heartfelt card with love and a Costa card
• daily texts with photos - dog doing daft things, dad working in the garden
• little notes in new socks I bought, so each pair has a warm or funny message in it...
• present hidden amongst the towels, florentines and great coffee

Thinking of sending...

• laminated cards with favourite recipes - French toast here we come!
• longing for more ideas

Writing that makes me feel sentimental for when secondary school started and the joy of one's first mobile - texting daily jokes to puzzle over, answer only arriving hours later...

Do you want to make them homesick????

In their new student world endless parental handholding is NOT COOL. Back off, give them their own space.

Still stuck with mine at home but I imagine if I can ever shift them, they would much prefer cash to a photo of the pet .

Your kids know they are loved and appreciated. They don't need performative parenting or the invention of rituals to mark supposed landmark events.

You can text them a couple of times a week asking how they are or with a dog/cat photo and see if they reply. If they appear chatty, great, if not let them be.

Let them know you are happy to hear from them whenever they need you. And then wave them off.
Term is ten weeks long - it's very quick and they are back for Xmas.

Your child has gone to uni and doesn't know how to make French toast? My 4 learned that at 8 and could all cook it independently ( my autistic son with supervision) by ten years old. My youngest is 12 and year 8 and she and her older three siblings can all cook at least 6 meals of things like Home made pizza ( scratch made dough and sauce) , Bolognaise, chilli, carbonara , bread and chicken/ham veg soup. And that's before you even get to convenience food like beans on toast, microwave meals, nuggets and chips etc.

Ideas? A pair of scissors to cut the apron straps? A lesson in wiping their own botties? Uni is for spreading their wings, not for their mum and dad hammering them with texts, letters and parcels. A text a day? Sure. Several calls a a week? Go for it. But let you ADULT child grow up a bit. If you are honest, ask the texts, parcels and letters etc are for you- not them. You are looking for reason for them to reply and that's unfair and manipulative.

My dd has exactly what she needs, a generous allowance! I call her once a week. She calls me when she needs a recipe/advice/more money. Don't embarrass your kids, but a care package goes down well - sweets, biscuits, jam, wine ...

When I went to uni in 2010 I was quite happy with a weekly phonecall for half an hour to chat about stuff on TV etc and any news of what was going on back home. The first couple of months my mum visited me every other weekend for a few hours, took me to do some food shopping (about £20-30 worth and paid for it, so more of my loan/grant money for nights, result!) and took me out to one of the campus pubs or restaurants for lunch. After first term the visits were less often, but same format, throughout all 3 years. Maybe during exam time I'd say not to bother as I was shut in the library all day at the weekend studying.

What was more important is that I just knew my mum was there if I needed help. Was always happy to take a call even if it was just to ask about laundry (can I put this in with that etc) or I was just a bit homesick (during freshers).

I'd be horrified to receive anything you have suggested in your initial post OP. Although every child is different.

The costa card is a great idea - my parents did this for my younger brother and he loved it.

Thinking back to when I was a student, daily reminders about what was going on at home, especially photos, would have made my homesickness unbearable. Knowing my mum was at the end of the phone when I needed HER or just to talk about any old crap, with no expectations, was what I needed (and still is many years on, though the questions have changed from 'do I use fabric conditioner on this' to 'what do I dress the baby in' and I always try to be there for her in return now I'm a real adult ).

I got the odd funny thing in the post every now and then, like a funny clipping from a magazine she'd spotted with a little letter, and I still have these now, but we're talking once or twice a term at most!

It all seems a bit...much.

My mum would buy me a food shop each new semester - I never got parcels sent up, didn't know anyone else who did either. I rang my parents maybe once a week or so, with the odd text in between. When I went abroad we would Skype instead.

Why the need for all the extra stuff?

I sent the odd Sainsburys order when I knew funds were running low!

DS really wouldn’t like that frequency of contact

The only thing he ever asked for was more pix of the puppy

I think more than a weekly phone call could be a bit suffocating. This is a time when they’re meant to be spreading their wings. But it does depend on the temperament if your child.

Home recipe book is a great idea!

DD would have hated this when she went to uni aged 18. She hardly contacted us for the first couple of years away, she was having too much fun with her new life and friends and making her own way in the world. Several years on, she is working and living 200 miles away and now appreciates the stupid memes and stuff I share with her from Facebook and Twitter and she sends me the same sort of stuff back. We have the same type of humour and communicate like this more or less every day. So I would say hold off, at least for the first few weeks and let the level of communication be driven by her.

That does sound a bit much.

I occasionally send my children money, with an instruction to treat themselves/go out and have fun. That tends to be appreciated.

They really don't have space (physical or mental) for constant bits and pieces.

Its been a very long time since uni but my parents sent me a friday night tenner with a note of anything that had happened over the week. I can't say I was ever too bothered if auntie so and so had come for tea but i think it helped my parents feel not so distanced and the money was nice..

As PPs have said, a family WhatsApp works well, with photos sent on both sides, with individual parent to offspring ones, to cater for shared interests, perhaps. That's worked for us. Plus the odd home made thing to go back with that they wouldn't make themselves - banana bread, jars of salted mixed nuts or whatever.

We do a weekly FB video chat with DS1. I occasionally send him a treat that I know he'll enjoy. He's too far away to come home and as I often work weekends it's tricky for us to visit, so we enjoy the video chats so we can see him!

Agree with everyone who has said you’ve just made this about you. All of what you’ve mentioned would drive me nuts.

When I went to university I think I spoke to my mum every month or so or when she called, but I probably wouldn’t answer if she called any more than that.

Dealing with/reading stuff from you daily will require energy and time from your child. They should be spending this energy on making friends and learning how to be independent.

Remote performance parenting an 18 year old suggests you need to try to find something else to do with your time.

My D.C. used to send each other revision parcels - a shoe box with a scented candle, sweets, miniatures of gin, bubble bath, Puzzle books etc.

Once in a while I’d send them a Tesco shop with staples like coffee and pasta and eggs plus some treats like Prosecco, biscuits and steaks (not for the veggie one obviously) but these were rare, maybe twice a year. I didn’t want to take over or intrude on their independence.

A friend of mine used to send her son a grocery shop every week along with a food plan and recipe cards. One of my D.C. was friendly with this lad and visited him at uni occasionally. The boy sold what he could of the lovingly selected groceries for cash to buy weed. What he couldn’t sell festered until one of his housemates had enough and chucked it all out. Those food parcels were just part of his Mum babying him all his life and he took a long time to grow up.

Just having horrified visions of my freshers’ week shag grabbing a towel from the lovingly-laundered pile and finding a soppy note from my mum flutter out...

Keeping in touch with news from home is lovely, and will help with early homesickness. Practical stuff is also nice, up to a point - the odd food parcel or similar. But remember that this is your first chance to have an adult relationship with your children, so you need to set that tone for them, and allow them to build their independence.

When I left home and moved away after university, mum and I wrote long, newsy letters in between phone calls, with photos and mementos in them (this was thirty years ago so no email or smartphones!). Both of us really cherish those letters now, and they made me very happy at the time.