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

[CloudBuster66]

First time posting and a bit nervous but ...
having read the poster who was wanting her son to come to Friday night takeaway every month and reading the replies made me think:
Situation is I have 2 x DS, both have lived in the antipodes for the past 8 years. Don't have any other children.

Due to Covid we didn't see them for 5 years, and in the past 3 years have seen them once each for visits here, and then both at once when DH and I went for a month's holiday last year.
DS1 was challenging in his late teens and early 20s but turned his life around whilst working abroad for several years before returning and then emigrating 8 years ago. He gave me (not DH, he is very laid back) a lot of headaches when he was younger and at one point moved out and did not speak to us for a year - though the door was always open for him.

Now DS1 is fully settled with a girlfriend and good job, 12000 miles away. He is not one for talking much but seemed to enjoy our visit last year.

We have a WhatsApp group for the 4 of us (DH, me, DS1 and DS2) which he engages with some of the time. DS2 has always face timed us up to several times a week, wherever he is in the world, but we have to cajole DS1 into speaking or facetiming us, it is usually reserved for major life events.

AIBU to write him a long letter saying I am sorry if I did anything wrong in the past and asking him if he could phone us more often?

DH and I had DS1 quite (not very) young, and we have always treated him and DS2 both the same and they say they had a happy childhood.

I do not want to emotionally blackmail DS1, but I miss them both so much all the time. I don't want to complain because I have friends in worse positions who don't have children around any more or don't communicate with them so I try to be optimistic. My DH is lovely and we have a close extended family and plenty of friends. But with DS1 being so settled so far away (DS2 is coming to live back in the UK for a bit soon), I am worried about him becoming a stranger due to his lack of communication. When we do speak to him he does not give much away and says our conversation is boring if we have nothing noteworthy to report.
(I am also concerned about never seeing any prospective grandchildren and them not knowing who we are, but that is another worry for the future).

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.

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.

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.

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

How often do YOU FaceTime home?

how often do YOU initiate a call?

easy question…

@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.

Get DH to mention it in the group WhatsApp

keep it casual

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.

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.

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.

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

Helpful 🙄

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?”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Oh OP I would find this so hard as well. I think do not send an apologetic letter. There’s no call for one as you are not thinking back and identifying things you did wrong. Send a warm little card saying I’m so happy you’ve built a great life for yourself, I’m so proud of you, I’d love to share in it a little bit more and it would mean the world to me if we could talk on the phone more often, like fortnightly or whatever suits. A five minute call would make my day! Then sign off happily with love. That’s what I would do.

Some lived 12,000 miles away from their family when there was no such thing as facetime.
Letters had to be written, phone calls booked via the operator; 3 min time-slots, very expensive, often a crap line.
So, life much easier now. However, new technology doesn't mean your children owe you a certain number of interactions, rightly or not. Plenty with kids in their country of residence rarely see or speak to their grown kids. You say you miss them and he doesn't have much to say when you do speak. But once you've done the howxare you/the kids/oh/, etc, there's not much left... the minutae of day to day life aren't interesting to other people.
It's not like you haven't seen him since he emigrated, so why not just make the most of the iteractions you have?

Anyone else with overseas families who used to record cassette tapes for them? I suppose because phone calls were so expensive it was a way for them to hear all your voices. I remember my dad doing them for his parents.

OP, I think you should just try calling him occasionally? Fortnightly?

I spent 3 years in SE Asia with my kids. Face time and video calls were a pain in the backside due to the time difference. Basically only overlap times to call were morning and evening.
You want to get the kids to school/go to work/gym in the morning or in the evening you want to settle down and relax (for some reason my DS went mental on a video call!) So that leaves weekends only as a good time. Which if you have an activity or something planned then that knocks that out.
I know your DS doesn't have kids but time difference will mean that there's just rarely a good time to call.
Let him know you're thinking of him regular, send messages and chats and dont hassle for weekly calls.

AIBU to write him a long letter saying I am sorry if I did anything wrong in the past and asking him if he could phone us more often?

Don't do this, it sounds cringy and needy. Just keep communications going, try phoning him a few times or suggest when you do speak to him that you set up a regular FaceTime session with him. You may well find that if he gets into a relationship and has children things will change anyway.

WhatsApp can be very casual, so why don't you just put little tidbits of news, photos or funny memes on the family chat occasionally. Keeps contact without any expectations.

He has a new life, so be happy for him. But if you put pressure on him to communicate, you will definitely drive him away. Just relax - he'll be in touch when he's ready.