How often do teens at boarding school stay in touch with home?

[Wherewillthisend]

Posted in higher ed but probably should have gone here instead. 🫣
Our son is boarding for A-levels in another country and started about 4 weeks ago. He is so far loving it and made lots of friends etc. I miss him sooo much and would love to have him back home.

I will survive of course and as long as he is happy then he can choose, but my issue is that we hear soooo little from him. I message him pretty much every day(just something short, like good morning, have a fab day), and try to call him once to twice a week. He will often answer my messages eventually but almost never answers when I call and does not call me back. I feel like we have been completely excluded from his life(I know I’m being slightly overdramatic) but he is only 16 and I haven’t met any of his new friends, I have no idea what he is learning at school, what activities he does after school as he is so vague with his answers…

how often do you hear from your son if he is a teen at boarding school?

Going through it a 2nd time with daughters. The eldest, I had to call the house after 2 weeks and get the house master to get her to call me. She was just having too much fun. And it didnt really get any better unless she wanted something lol

2nd one is better, will call me at least twice a week and messages in-between.

Aha, so perhaps this is not uncommon but so hard… feels like I’ve gone from knowing everything about them to being completely ghosted… 💔 Will try to talk to him about it, but will keep my expectations very low… 😬🤞🏼😭

Did you talk to him before he left to live in another country?

It feels as if there’s a massive mismatch between your expectations and his? If this wasn’t talked about before he moved out, how is he supposed to know?

You have a very good point, no we didn’t talk loads. He has never been one for conversation, and especially not on the phone. It’s different when you see them every day and you can just tell that they are ok by their mood… it’s really hard now that I can’t judge his mood from a text.
Have you got kids that have moved out for a-levels or uni and can relate at all?

Yes, our eldest moved out as part of his training course. He was never the most communicative but we agreed to a weekly phone call before he went which worked well.

He didn’t feel like we were asking too much as parents, but I was content. I’d have liked it to be a FaceTime call, but apparently that was a step too far!

I always find that agreeing things like this in advance makes sure there’s not a mismatch of expectations. They’re not mindreaders to know what we were hoping would happen

Thank you for your input @Muchtoomuchtodo , I think that sounds like a plan. We will have a chat to him this weekend when he is home to set up a bit of a plan going forward! Can’t believe how stupid I was to think he might actually miss us a bit and want to speak to us… 🫣😂 Feels very naive now… 😵‍💫

DD1 used to call every night and say she hated it and wanted to come home. Said we would come and collect her, oh no, they were going bowling that night. Tomorrow was football and the next day swimming. DD2 used to call us to let us know what train she would be on if she was coming home. And would occasionally respond to my “are you still alive?” texts.

DS phones atleast once a day but he is a big communicator and only 13. If your son is not much of a communicator I expect not much has changed..

Parent of a teen girl boarder here - if all is going well and she's happy, she doesn't call in the evening as she's too busy having fun. She DOES message from the toilets during the day to pass on gossip and test results 🤣

My daughter just started boarding for A-levels and only texts when she needs me to send her something 😬 She can't get me off the phone fast enough as she constantly has plans with her new friends. I miss her like crazy and we're normally super close, but I take it as good sign that she's having a good time 😊

I called school on occasions to check mine was still alive. At home, she was v chatty (and a massive over sharer) but at school it was like she almost forgot I existed for 3 weeks at a time. I often had more success if I sent a comment/photo about the cat rather than myself. And asking a question or a general "Love you!" type message got no response. If I did hear, it was usually because something has gone wrong, so in her case, no contact meant she was happy and busy.

I think that plenty of you have already figured this out obviously, that the no news are good news and that it is not a boy thing either.

thank you everyone that has responded, it really helped. But the main thing that instantly removed all my worries was picking him up today and having the best evening together and him being super chatty and happy and telling me all about school and friends and everything else! ❤️ Couldn’t be happier, now just need to not worry so much! I think I can do that!

I usually manage to get some chat if I message them and ask if they would like me to send them some snacks from amazon, and what would they like. Then i slip in some questions between the what flavor of x and they only have y is that ok parts of doing the snack order

but some teenage dc just dont communicate much, even when you are standing right in front of them, let alone when they are off doing fun things with their friends every waking hour

Aw I'm sorry OP. If it makes you feel better, my sister and I went to boarding school. I called home loads as was very himesick, my sister barely called or came back for weekends. They used to "joke" that she clearly didn't like the family very much. Fastforward a few years later and she's now meeting with our parents almost every other day because she loves hanging out with them, whereas I moved country!

This sounds par for the course at this age, even when they’re living at home! I imagine it probably means he’s enjoying himself. I’d ease off on the daily messages, which sound like they’re more for you than him. You might actually find that he contacts you if he hasn’t heard from you for a bit. This is good practice for when he goes to university!