<p>I pretty much have a rule against my parents texting me. It’s fine for them to send me pictures via text - they could hardly do that with a voice call, and if they want a grocery list, we can put that together via text - grocery lists are normally communicated through writing. But otherwise, if they text I never respond. I’ve told them numerous times that I don’t text parents. They can call me every day and I’ll answer and have as long of a conversation with them as time allows, but I won’t text them. </p>
<p>Wow, @millancad. I hope you pay for your own phone and tuition. My kid wouldn’t have either with that attitude… I can understand an occasional missed text, but your attitude is pretty rude. Why is a parent’s text (probably parents who are covering at least part of your education cost) less important to respond to than a friend’s text?</p>
<p>I just dont thing most things need an answer that week. People need room to breathe without somebody at their back every minute. Parents should be about the last thing on their minds unless they are sick or maybe in jail.</p>
<p>@millancad only responds to parental text messages when they are compiling a grocery list of things to buy him/her. That statement speaks volumes.</p>
<p>I have the opposite issue. My family members (including DH) have trained me to text, not call, and if I call, not to bother leaving a message. They say if I call and they miss it they’ll just see they missed it and will call back. Of course, by then I’ll forget why I called. So, sometimes I leave a VM anyway if I call and tell them to listen to it if I forget.</p>
<p>I often dictate texts and then have to send a follow-up with corrections to the whacky autocorrect. Thats a standing joke in my family.</p>
<p>Wow, I think it would be pretty sad if family only crossed your mind when you were sick or in jail!</p>
<p>And waitng a WEEK to respond?to a text?? really? Thats either rude, lazy, disrespectful or all 3.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and long distance calls were expensive and on land lines, the traditional Sunday morning call was fine. But in this day and age-- no way. I agree with my-three-sons about the sick or in jail line. Just wow.</p>
<p>I guess it just comes down to how the family communicates and how much respect they have for each other. I expect my children to answer me and any other person who contacts them. My nephew doesn’t answer texts and doesn’t call his grandmother, and it hurts her. I told my kids that isn’t acceptable. If they want to be rude people when they are financially independent, that’s up to them, but while on my watch, they will continue to be polite and that includes responding to communications by texts, calls, email, letters or any other method they choose. It doesn’t have to be instantaneous, but within reason.</p>
<p>I also expect them to response to bosses, dentists, professors, the university and other communications. Blowing people off is not okay.</p>
<p>I expect we’ll have a few exchanges like this:</p>
<p>D1: “Dad, I need my tuition payment! The Bursar is harassing me. Plus I’m out of money and the dining hall food sucks.”
Me: “Remind me next time you’re home and I’ll get you the money.”</p>
<p>My daughter and I talk or text daily just to keep in touch. My son will only call or text me if he wants/needs something. He also answers the phone with “what”. Ugh!! I do take a picture of their class schedule on my phone so I can call or text when I know they’re out of class. I would definitely say something to a college son/daughter who wasn’t responding to me-especially when I’m footing their cell phone and tuition bills. </p>
<p>I’m somewhere in the middle of the fence on this one. DS is a freshman; he’s been gone 4 weeks, and I have purposefully been trying <em>not</em> to initiate contact with him that requires a response unless it is something really important. I’ve even been resisting the urge to send him random, “Hope you’re having a good day,” sorts of texts that don’t require anything from him. It is certainly not because I’m not thinking about him or wondering how he’s doing or having a million questions about what his life is like. I’m trying to give him space so he doesn’t feel like I’m “hovering” and let him feel what it is like to truly do things on his own and develop that sense of independence and autonomy. I would love, love, love it if he were the type to text me a random picture of something each day, or just text to say hi or whatever, but he’s not the chatty type, and he didn’t do that sort of thing when he was home, so I don’t expect it now. Doesn’t mean I’m not seriously jealous of those of you who have that with your kids…</p>
<p>Sure, it is easier to communicate more often now, but I keep remembering back to when I was in college and how sometimes even the weekly phone call on Sunday evening was inconvenient. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about my parents or appreciate them … they were just a given, stable element in my world that I didn’t have to think about to know it was there, and my attention was focused on everything else that was new/changing/different. I was never homesick and I didn’t think about them much … until times when things got hard. Then I needed to reach out to what was steady and unshifting and stable, and that was my parents. Looking back I realize how much that must have been hard for them to bear because it is no fun to be on this end of it, and how yes, I was a self-centered 18 year old. But I did grow out of it; I didn’t have a bad relationship with my parents during college – I went home every break, lived at home every summer, and we got along fine and did stuff as a family, etc. – but when I was at school I was pretty much sucked into a different world. I know for me, I tended to get defensive when they’d point out options I hadn’t considered or disagree with me on a decision, because I viewed it as controlling. It actually took my DH (whom I was dating at the time), saying, “You know, it doesn’t sound to me like they’re trying to be controlling. They’re nice people and they love you and they’re just telling you what they think. But its still your decision.” It took me a while to get to the point that I could hear a viewpoint from them and not take it as something I had to do/comply with. And that was really my problem, not theirs. I actually do remember suddenly rediscovering that my parents were pretty neat, smart people who could be fun to be around when I finally got over that hump.</p>
<p>So I guess I’m saying that if the text isn’t something that really requires a response (even if you were hoping for one), I am trying to choose not to take it as a slight/rude/etc., but instead to understand this is all part of him developing enough autonomy that we can have a different kind of relationship. The relationship is changing, and its hard on both parties … and space is needed to let it happen. It sucks being the “grown up” all the time and having to understand that, because it does hurt – but they don’t realize it hurts (I had no idea and am now in complete awe of my parents…), and they’re not doing it to hurt … it’s just part of growing up.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that the few time’s he’s texted me and ended with, “love you”, I don’t save it on my phone so I can pull it out and read it over and over and over again…</p>
<p>My son communicates more now than he did first year of college. I think he was homesick then, and wanted to tough it out. Once I drew a “Wanted” picture, and that got a response.</p>
<p>e-mails are for regular news (“I ran into so-ans-so’s mom”), and texts are for more important stuff. It’s fun to exchange pictures. </p>
<p>…A lot of people in this thread are what many would call “helicopter parents.”</p>
<p>As someone who’ll be moving into the dorms in less than a couple of weeks, I do understand the desire for parents to stay in contact with their children when they’re away. A text/call every one or two weeks is sufficient in my opinion, and it need not be drawn out or anything like that. But texting/calling more than that, unless it’s an emergency or if you have a very compelling reason to stay in increased contact, really does seem excessive to me. Also, frequent calling/texting is obviously not a problem if your child welcomes it or initiates it, but that should go without saying. No offense, but I’d be pretty irritated if my mom called me as frequently as some of you guys say you do with your children. </p>
<p>And before one of you says something about how my mom should cut off my phone bill and not pay my tuition if I don’t respond enough to her texts/calls to her satisfaction, I’ll just say that I pay my own phone bill and the government fully funds my tuition. ;)</p>
<p>Give your kids more freedom. It’s supposed to be part of the college experience.</p>
<p>It happens to us. Just the other day, my S wanted $100 put on his account. My wife would reply to his texts or answer the phone. He called me to complain that he had to spend a $160 of his own money - like I really care - and his mother let him know, “you don’t reply to my messages, I won’t reply to yours.” </p>
<p>Problem is not 100% solved but a lot better than before.</p>
<p>"pretty much have a rule against my parents texting me. It’s fine for them to send me pictures via text - they could hardly do that with a voice call, and if they want a grocery list, we can put that together via text - grocery lists are normally communicated through writing. But otherwise, if they text I never respond. I’ve told them numerous times that I don’t text parents. "</p>
<p>I think that’s rude and inconsiderate. What, you’re too good to text them? People CARE about you; you can’t acknowledge it? </p>
<p>"text/call every one or two weeks is sufficient in my opinion, and it need not be drawn out or anything like that. But texting/calling more than that, unless it’s an emergency or if you have a very compelling reason to stay in increased contact, really does seem excessive to me. "</p>
<p>Ha - just as I was writing the previous post, D texted me to ask my opinion of what she should wear to a given event where she was having her picture taken. She didn’t <em>need</em> to ask me, but it’s nice she did. </p>
<p>Pizzagirl - as I am reading these at my desk at work my D has texted me three times with mundane stuff. They were about a hair appointment I made for her the weekend I am coming up. We are close and during her school years we had a one hour each way commute. A lot of time together in the car. Even more when we drove to volleyball practice, tournaments, etc. All this is to say that I guess the students/parents who call it “helicoptering” just don’t understand our relationship. I am not asking her to send me her work, not monitoring whether she does her work or not, not jumping in to “fix it” if she has a bad day, not calling to wake her up, not needing to know what her assignments are, etc. I stopped doing that sophomore year in preparation for college.</p>
<p>However, when I go up on the 27th for a reunion for my residential college, we have a gala to go to that she will attend as a legacy. She has been texting back and forth about what to wear, where I need to look in her closet for a particular dress, look for her shoes and stuff like that. Just normal conversation. Once she got her point across, she ran off to dinner with her suitemates, and I don’t have a clue as to what she will do the rest of the evening.</p>
<p>Most likely she will text me “good night” later tonight as in our family you never go to sleep without saying that to each other and I called my mom every night to tell her good night until she died at 86. That’s what we do in our family. Have there been some nights she has missed? Yes. I know then she is probably studying, hanging out or just went to sleep. But more often than not she will.</p>
<p>The best text I got was when I reminded her I would see her in 8 days and she texted back “Yay”!!!</p>
<p>
[quote…the government fully funds my tuition. {/quote]
</p>
<p>That would be us taxpayers. And most of us think you should respond to texts and calls from your parents. They changed your diapers and made sure you didn’t starve, kid. Treat them with some respect.</p>
<p>Heck, my daughter in Turkey texts me more than some of these young people feel is “acceptable.” And I’m definitely not helicoptering her there since it is her third year!</p>
<p>@intparent </p>
<p>I respect the fact that taxpayers make my education possible, but does that actually negate my point that some parents, including some in this thread, aren’t granting their children enough independence? Does the fact that my education is supported by the taxpayer mean that I must maintain the same kind of relationship with my parents as the children of some other families do? Can the taxpayer have a right to dictate the nature of my relationship with my family because they’re helping me go to school? It would seem irrelevant and somewhat absurd.</p>
<p>And why do you imply that I don’t treat my parents with respect? You don’t know the dynamics of my relationship with my family, so it’d be a little presumptuous to say that I don’t respect them enough because I’m not in contact with them as much as your children are with you or as much as the children of other parents are with them.</p>
<p>I didn’t even say or imply that one should totally ignore one’s family when moving away. I just think that a short phone call or text once every week or so should be enough for most parents. </p>
<p>And by the way, I’m about to have coffee and talk with my mom, something of a tradition in my household(My mom, for some reason likes to drink coffee in the middle of the day). I also plan to visit her every other weekend since the college I’ll be going to isn’t far from her house. But I obviously don’t respect my mom enough.</p>