Contact between 16 y.o. and grandparents

[MaybeYouCan]

My 16 y.o. son would like to know what typical contact between teens his age and their grandparents looks like eg frequency, level of involvement in the teen's life. He is autistic.

He speaks to them on the phone a few times a week and sees them for the day with his dad at maybe 4-6 week intervals. He tells them about his ongoing friendship issues and about the girl he likes & his interactions with other boys who also like her.

They are currently telling him that he needs to ring them after every social event to update them on what happened & what was said. (By social events, I mean youth club type sessions which he goes to 3 times a week.)

I don't think this is a normal expectation and he would like to understand what kind of contact other teens have with their grandparents.

He will be reading replies.

My teen and her cousins are close the their surviving grandparent but visit with other family, she visits us but they don't ring. There are 5 children and they all see her, not quite weekly but definitely twice a month. There is no pressure from the grandparent. Contact is exclusively led by the teens. Those who can drive pop in. GM would absolutely never intrude on their lives, pressure them or have any expectations at all. She loves them and is always delighted to hear from them and see them but very much recognises that they are busy people and doesn't lay any claim to their time. We all live locally which makes it easier.

There is no 'normal' amount of contact between any family member or friends. It is whatever suits you. There should be no obligation to update anyone about anything unless it suits you to discuss it. Any other sort of relationship is along the coercive/controlling continuum.

Why do they need to know who said what at youth group?

Is there any chance he’s misreading them saying they’d like to talk to him as opposed to them pressing it? My mum says ‘you’ll have to tell me all about it next time’- she doesn’t mean she’ll follow up, it’s just her phrasing!

This is a good point. Might the GP also be a bit literal in their interpretations?

Sounds excessive as it is now. My 15yo daughter speaks to my mum by text once a week and sees her every 2-3 weeks. There’s no expectation to talk about particular topics and they have a lovely relationship. Her other set of grandparents are very low contact by comparison

At that age I expected mine to see their housebound Grandma who lived a 10 min walk away every couple of weeks but said it was perfectly acceptable to pop in for 15 mins or so. She couldn’t get out and about and seeing them really made her day. DD used to go every week and DS every couple of weeks.

For Grandparents that live further away (and weren’t housebound) they see them two or three times a year and also message them occasionally.

My dd texts her nan every now and then and sees her around once a month.

Dictating how often your ds should contact them is likely to have the opposite effect to the one they’re hoping for!

My autistic 15 year old sees his grandad once a year or once every two years (grandparents live 300 miles away) and grandad has to come up
to visit as my son won’t visit them 😂 he doesn’t text/call in between. He sees my mum 2/3 times a year. My other autistic preteen visits them once a year at theirs for a week or so and rings/whatsapps whenever he feels like. Preteen is more peopley than my teen though.

Or them off him.

It varies. Daily for my husband, when he was 16. A lot depends on how much they did when the kids were younger. If the grandparents never bothered with them (I get some would have had health or other issues preventing this) then you can understand it's less likely in that case. Some people live in multi-generational households, and while you might say this is more typical in other counrties, this is actually much more common in the UK than some think.
Some grandparents never even meet their grandkids, so I don't think you can give a general "right" answer.