<p>I once sent a text message to one of my sons asking if he’d be home for dinner. His text response was “Doubt it. I’m in Las Vegas.”</p>
<p>When I send a message to D1, “I am in a store right now, are you still a size 6 for this brand?” No matter where she is in the world she’ll text me back.</p>
<p>Oldfort, I’m afraid that wouldn’t work for me. My Dd1 believes that clothes shopping is a waste of both time and money. She wore a pair of falling apart sneakers on a visit last year and wouldn’t let me buy a new pair for her (and it’s not like she had others in good condition at her home.) I emailed several links to sales & online coupons before she finally ordered replacements herself about a month later. Then she sent me a photo so I’d stop worrying about it. I just hope she never wore the old ones to work (the dress code at her office is extremely casual.)</p>
<p>Well today is August first and I still haven’t heard a peep—and thanks to being able to vent off here I’ve resisted the urge to call him. I really think he just isn’t calling because he doesn’t want to come home and help paint bedrooms and he can’t think how to ask for the money while avoiding the work. Little does he know that I’ve decided to wait until after the younger boys return to school to start painting, and now that I’m up at 6:15 to get my son to tennis practice, I don’t really need Dracula here wandering the house at night anyway.</p>
<p>I do intend to have a short, blunt conversation with him about communication and consideration, but that may need to be separate from the money conversation. I am resisting the urge to take the money I’ve set aside for his rent and spend it all on new bras. And why are good bras so expensive?</p>
<p>"I once sent a text message to one of my sons asking if he’d be home for dinner. His text response was “Doubt it. I’m in Las Vegas.” </p>
<p>LOL!!!</p>
<p>Ah, Silpat, my son looks positively homeless. He wears things until they fall apart, and when I offer to buy him clothes he generally turns me down.</p>
<p>Helenback: about the new bras… I have a good friend who swears by the $5.99 bras at Target. Really. (I don’t wear bras anymore. Gave it up years and years ago. 42 years ago, to be precise. Think of all the money I’ve saved.)</p>
<p>Looks like I may be the only one who agrees with SnowflakeVT comments and suggestions. </p>
<p>I too, was a little surprised at the way the visit was described by the OP:</p>
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<p>A different way to handle this, rather than saying you would be in town, would have been to email or text your son to say you have an opportunity to get a ride to Bloomington for the day, and would he like to have lunch with you or go shopping. You run the risk of his saying “no”…but…it just struck me as “pushy” to assume the visit would work out for him…even if you are his mom!</p>
<p>And…without being indulgent…you may need to meet your son more than half way on some stuff, and…for the next year or two…do things his way if you want to enjoy being with him. If his behavior on sleeping and eating truly disrupts family life, you’ll need to explain that to him…and maybe he won’t come home often (which, you’ve indicated, is OK with you.) You’ve stated you want to have breakfast or lunch with him. He wants to stay up until 3am and sleep through “normal” breakfast and lunch. Exactly the same thing has happened in our household. So…for a few years…I did not enjoy the pleasure of my child’s company at breakfast or lunch.</p>
<p>We did insist on the once a week call…on a regular day chosen by our child…with an “evening” time window (or some kind of communication before the day/time if they were not going to be able to call.) Sometimes the calls were great, more often they lasted a minute or two – but were an adequate “check in” for us. I can count on 1 hand the times we called our child in 4 years of college. If something was urgent – I wrote a very concise e-mail with the questions that needed to be answered – and put “urgent” in the subject of the email. This type of communication didn’t happen more than once a semester – so I always received a response.</p>
<p>Our once a week caller is now out of school and calls us more often. We still call this child rarely, but occasionally text. Now I use “please respond” in the email subject if I need a response to something…but continue to keep this type of e-mail very brief and to the point.</p>
<p>mmmmmmm…about the painting you would like him to help with? and the money conversation?</p>
<p>How about, …“sweetie, I know how busy you are with important stuff. And you know how expensive it is with you being in school and all. And the painting really needed to get done. Anyway, I’ve gone ahead and scheduled Handy Andy to help me with the painting beginning on August X, he’s not too expensive, only $XXX. I know you understand that I too am too busy to do all the painting myself and so I am needing to use some of the money I had previously earmarked for you to pay Handy Andy. I hope you are ok with this.”</p>
<p>My bet is that he would be hotfooting it home, where you could then have a nice chat about appropriate communication levels while you paint adjacent walls.</p>
<p>Actually, I would write a letter to my son if I felt that it was to difficult to tell him how I feel over the phone or face to face. I would spell things out and ask him to think a bit and then contact me also in writing.</p>
<p>I have done this once or twice over the years and , at least for me, it has worked. Once we had put things in pen on paper, it was somehow easier to talk, and helped us discuss in terms of specific solutions instead of just heated accusations.</p>
<p>I am over 50, but if my parents wanted to see me, I made the time. I can assure you that I am probably busier than OP’s son. </p>
<p>My father called me one time about how his computer wasn’t working properly. He said, “it’s not that important, but when you get a chance do you think you could take a look at it?”. It was a Sun, pouring rain and thunder, I got over there to fix it. I knew how much my dad enjoyed his computer, if I didn’t fix it then it would mean another week before he could use it. We live 3000 miles away from my parents now. Something similar happened few months ago, D1 was in town to visit some friends, she cancelled lunch with a friend to fix her grandfather’s computer. We didn’t ask her to, but it didn’t occur to her not to do it. </p>
<p>I don’t think it is pushy to expect our kid’s to go out of their way to make some time for us. When we don’t expect that, we are telling them that we do not matter. For all the crap we have done for them, a little bit of appreciation is not too much to ask for. It is also teaching them that everything in life is a two way street, in order to receive, one needs to give a bit.</p>
<p>Well this how it all resolved.</p>
<p>I hung in there until last evening without making contact with him, but I’m making travel plans for the weekend, and I didn’t really want to be sitting on the beach and get a text saying,“Need the rent…” I realize that the proper response to that would be,“Tough luck, Mister. I’m on the beach!” But still, I preferred to just deal with it.</p>
<p>I sent him a text saying, “So what’s happening?” To my surprise, I got a very long text from him—a three parter! That’s never happened before. He told me that he’s got a second interview for a job at a Chili’s where a friend helped him get a foot in the door and that he was planning on coming home soon, some time around the 7th because he has a friend leaving for grad school and wants to say goodbye. He said he got an extension on the rent so he didn’t need help with that, but he could use a bit of money for food and gas. I asked if he was able to talk on the phone, or was he at a disco or orgy where he wouldn’t be able to hear me. He said he was not at an orgy because it’s the summer and all the orgy people had gone home. He’s a funny kid.</p>
<p>So I called him up and said,“Listen, I’ve been waiting to hear from you about the rent money. I feel like I offered you some options and you didn’t let me know if you were interested in them.” </p>
<p>He said,“I just feel awkward asking you for money when I didn’t have a job this summer.” </p>
<p>I said,“Well yes, that’s supposed to feel awkward, but it’s not an uncommon experience for a college kid to not budget correctly and you’ve never needed help before. I’m not going to lecture you because I’m guessing when you’re living off the contents of your change jar you’ve already figured out the flaws in your plan. So you want to work at Chili’s?”</p>
<p>“Not really, but I realized that without any restaurant experience on my resume it was going to be hard to get a job, and since my buddy could get me in for an interview I thought it was a good idea to get some experience so I could look for other things. Every ad for even the lowliest jobs says ‘experience required’ so I couldn’t even get interviewed anywhere this summer.” </p>
<p>So I said,“Well, you have to know that you can call me when you’re struggling because I’m still here for you. I won’t lecture you, I just want you to call me four times a day in return for my help.” He laughed, and I said,“But seriously, I really need to hear from you more often.” And he said, “I’ll call more often, I just don’t want to end up like B_____”</p>
<p>B_____ is his roomie who apparently skypes with mom for two hours at a stretch and calls her every single day—not by his choice. It’s funny, because I’d chatted with her and asked her if she heard from her son and she said,“Oh yes! All the time! He’s really good about staying in touch.” I was green with envy. Now I find that it’s because she aggressively demands that level of contact. </p>
<p>So there you go. Thanks for all your input and letting my dump all my anxiety here. My son would be wildly appreciative if he knew the crazy phone call you all saved him from!</p>
<p>I have two kids on the opposite ends of the spectrum. the first one (will be a third year this fall) talks to us constantly. We never call, unless there is a clear functional need for it. He calls us. During the semester, he calls us 1-2 times a week and video chats us for 30-60 minutes at a time. Now that it’s summer and he is interning at Chicago where he goes to school, he video chats with us 3-4 times a week, regaling us all about the people, the organization, and the projects he is involved with - each 30-60 minutes. This, on top of lengthy email exchanges several times a week: him sending us his elaborate analysis of the organizational dynamics at the firm he is interning, or some thesis he is writing on various subject matters, and we critiquing them and also sharing some essays and writings, what not -which he also critiques.</p>
<p>the second one who will be going to college this fall - well, I think we will be lucky if we get a single line text once a month, let alone a phone call. When we include him in the email list of friends and family we use to send various family updates, he complains that we are cluttering his inbox. I think he never really reads any of email from us. That’s just the way he is. I have no intention to make him communicate more with us. It will have to be his choice. </p>
<p>I know this kid. If we try to force him to do something, he will go in the opposite direction pronto. Meanwhile, I also know he is a very well adjusted and responsible kid with a full ride scholarship to a very good school. So, it is what it is. I am bracing myself for not ever hearing his voice once he leaves home this fall unless he comes back home for recesses and breaks - even then, I expect him to be busy with his friends mostly. AND, this is OK by me.</p>
<p>Some people may think I am neglectful as a parent to set such a low expectation. Some may think we are not teaching manners and attitudes for other’s feelings. Maybe. But, we never tried to make the first one call us and be in touch with us. We won’t do that with the second one either. As long as he is functioning well as an adult, how he communicates with us is up to him. It takes two to tango, and I don’t like to engage a reluctant partner. When he comes around and values his communication with us, he will do to, and it will be full of joy since he chose it.</p>
<p>Perhaps I could adopt your first son! :)</p>
<p>You raise some interesting points, because I do think personality plays a very big part in this. You are following my original path—which was to demand nothing. However, I didn’t really expect to hear nothing—at least you’re preparing yourself. I agree with your statement about engaging a reluctant partner, and that it will be a much better relationship in the long run if it is reciprocal. I guess my fear is that my son would get so out of the habit of talking to us that he’d just drift away. </p>
<p>I said to him last night,“I just need you to call now and then because if you end up in a cult and I’m on The Today Show talking about it, I don’t want to have to say I was the last to know because I hadn’t talked to you in six months.” We had a fun conversation about Mad Men being on Netflix and he told me I really need to watch it because it’s well written. It was great, and I don’t need to have that every day, or even every week, but it turns out my threshold for no contact is lower than I thought.</p>
<p>I’m a student and I understand that while some parents want too much communication, others expect much less. However, IMO, no matter how busy your child is, how hard is it for him/her to respond to your text(s) or to chat for a few minutes on the phone with you once a week? </p>
<p>I don’t get it. If my parents want to speak with me, I call them later in the night or whenever I have time to text or call. Doing otherwise would appear ungrateful or rude or as we say in Spanish, I’d come across as malcriado/a.</p>
<p>My sons during college friended me on condition I post nothing, ever, on their Facebook walls. No links, no comments on their posts. Instead I use the FB “Message” button which comes to them as a Private Message for their eyes only. Email works equally well.</p>
<p>S-2 told me he uses his Wall “to impress dates” and make new social contacts. At his age, it’s the last place he’d want a Mom’s voice evident, bantering among his friends. Also he said “Don’t go exploring my friends’ Walls and try to figure out my social life. A lot of parents get fouled up with their kids that way.”</p>