<p>WDJr doesn’t read email. He scans subject lines and decides if he thinks the email is important enough to read. WashMom and WDJr are presently in the middle of a spirited discussion of whether Jr is obligated to read email from mom. Sound familiar to anyone?</p>
<p>D and I have a code. If the heading to an email contains certain code words, it means that it is important that she read the email as soon as she can and get back to me.</p>
<p>All other emails–she can use her discretion.</p>
<p>yes he is obligated to read it…sometimes it is important stuff, and it is it just a nice thing to do</p>
<p>if he doens’t think mom is important, that is really quite sad to me</p>
<p>if he is worried that he needs to send a lenghty response, he can just say</p>
<p>love ya mom!!! send cookies</p>
<p>I experieced the same thing as Washmom, but realized that it is part of process of seperating. A lot of what is important to me is not to S. I can think that it is important to him, but unless he thinks it is important it gets “dead filed.”</p>
<p>Something similar to junk mail.</p>
<p>I realized that a young adult should be making these decisions as to what is important. Is S going to make mistakes in judging what is important? Sure, but as long as I make sure to stay out of it and let him take the full force of the mistake it is a necessary learning experience.</p>
<p>This attitude has worked. We have developed a much more mature relationship. It even has resulted in him using me as a resource for judgment and opinion BUT on his terms (and only when he asks).</p>
<p>I figure that by college it is time that S makes these decisions for himself. Stay tuned because I discussed early in the summer the need to make decisions and book holiday air transportation. I’m guessing he hasn’t done so and will be riding the bus 750 miles to get home. I doubt he’l make that mistake twice.</p>
<p>In my opinion, the main reason to communicate via e-mail is for the convenience of the recipient, who can open it at his convenience, rather than being interrupted while busy, as he would be if you used more intrusive means of communication.</p>
<p>If your son isn’t answering your e-mails, and there is important content in there, I suggest calling him on the phone, preferably at a time of day that is convenient for you but not for him. That’s what I do. (Of course, this only works if your son is one of those people who has a cell phone surgically attached to his body 24 hours a day, like my son.)</p>
<p>Actually, though, my son does answer my e-mails. It’s just that he often waits three or four days, and sometimes there is content in there that can’t wait that long.</p>
<p>I think my son reads his, but he doesn’t always respond… I REALLY like instant message with the boys. Short and sweet.</p>
<p>I think son reading email from mom is probably dictated by their previous relationship and how he views email as a whole.</p>
<p>But personally, I have 3 sons.</p>
<p>I send them email and they read it, usually ASAP.</p>
<p>If they didn’t, I wouldn’t write again.</p>
<p>Period.</p>
<p>Kat
ps why this works is because they KNOW I wouldn’t email again. And they know INSTANTLY it would be difficult to reach me by AIM, home phone, cell, letter, other sibs, boat, helicopter…</p>
<p>I recently sent email invitations to matriculating students for a send off picnic for my Ivy alma mater. I had mentioned the picnic to all of them at our April accepted student dinner and gave them the date at that time so they knew it was coming. I followed by a phone call to each student a few days after the email, leaving messages when no one answered. I have yet to hear from a third of the students. A few mothers called saying their child [happened to be sons] did not check their email. I think students in this era have an obligation to check and respond to email; what happens with mother email may vary! I shouldn’t be hearing from parents at this stage of the game… a bit off track but just set the wrong way with me.</p>
<p>Like Weenie, my Ss read my e-mail, just don’t often respond. The answer I get when I ask about it is, “If it’s something I need to answer, I’ll call you…and Mom, if its that important, CALL ME” Maybe e-mail is now going the way of snail mail…not immediate enough for them.</p>
<p>A little OT, but my 14-year-old S has been at CTY for 9 days and has not called home! There are no phones in the rooms this year so I can’t call him. I sent cookies yesterday and wrote “Call home!” all over the package.</p>
<p>My S only checks his email once a day even in the summer. I’m really not sure if he reads my emails while he’s away. I occasionally get replies but always very short - one sentence and love ya. My sense is that he does just scan email…while at home he’ll often come out and tell me he’s received an email from X. When I ask him what X said, 99 percent of the time his reply is “I don’t know, I’ll have to go read it”. </p>
<p>NYMom - my son went to a summer program in Boston when he was 15. After 3 weeks, I still hadn’t heard from him in spite of leaving numerous messages on his cell phone. I sent care packages with notes asking him to call. Finally I called the number I was given for the dorms and begged them to please find my son and have him call. It was another week before he finally called and I doubt if he talked to me for more than a minute. The following year he went to a program in Amherst. It was the same story. College is a bit better as he calls occasionally to ask for food. Wish I had some wonderful advice on how to get your S to communicate. For my S, I’ve just realized that it doesn’t matter if he’s here or away - he is not a great communicator. This last weekend I was so frustrated with him - he seemed to be locked in his room, listening to music, nothing getting done (he’s not been successful in finding summer work except a few little tutoring jobs and I’m not really happy) - Sunday night I went in his room and talked a bit about how frustrated I was that he was doing “nothing”. Monday he came out and started bubbling over about a computer program he’d written in Java over the weekend. I asked him why he hadn’t told me that’s what he was working on over the weekend when I was ranting about him doing nothing - his response “I didn’t have the bugs worked out”. If only he’d communicated that he was doing programming! I guess my point in this long rambling is many of them only communicate when they have something important to say. And I know my son’s idea of what is important is very different than mine.</p>
<p>oaklandmom, I think our sons are brothers under the skin! Mine is also not all that forthcoming even in person. If I want to know what is going on at school, I take him and his friend out to eat. The friend spews out information and my son chimes in. This isn’t working so well now that he’s a little older - they’d rather go out by themselves.</p>
<p>My son spends hours programming, too.</p>
<p>My son likes to get e-mails and I know he reads them fairly regularly, he just doesn’t seem to understand how the “reply” button works. One benefit to e-mail is that we only have to ask him to do something two or three times, whereas in person we have to ask him four or five.</p>
<p>I think the op’s son is obligated to read the emails…however, I think mom needs to have a better strategy. Cut back on the length and make sure there is something in the emails that matters to him, even just a small thing, like-“I was going through your room to give away old junk…do you still want your Mario collections?” ;)</p>
<p>I think it’s like training your kids to do anything. I rarely email my son,but we do ask that he call us once a week, whenever it’s convenient for him. So far he’s been good about it through his first year of college. We’ll see what happens next year.</p>
<p>My S has to read email during the sch. year because he gets a lot of important ones from the sch. that he has to be aware of. During the summer, he might check it once a week. When I send him emails he rarely replies. He would rather call on the phone. If the email contains something really important (versus just chit-chat) I usually write READ THIS in the subject line just to make sure he notices!</p>
<p>WashDad,
The situation as described sounds quite familiar. I sit and stew waiting for S to respond to an email. By the way, I email infrequently, mostly less than once a week and I no longer send just “newsy” emails. I even have written in the body of the email things like, “By the way, this requires a response, which means you have to hit the REPLY button.!” I have periodically sent brownies (world class brownies, I might add) and have not received any acknowledgment whatsoever, so I don’t send more for a long, long time. The only good part about this is that his younger brothers see the cause and effect relationship here and have both told me that when I send brownies to them in college, I will get an immediate thank you. ;)</p>
<p>It’s not just sons. My 13-year old daughter flew on her own to her month-long summer program. It was nerve wracking when we didn’t hear from her for over a week, and then only after I sent an e-mail to the program director, pleading for some kind of news.</p>
<p>We’ve had a grand total of four e-mails, two of them only a sentence long – and I believe the communication has been more extensive because she was hoping we would let her bring a puppy home…(sigh)… at least she doesn’t seem to be miserable and homesick…</p>
<p>I recognize my second son here. I think he reads my e-mails. I don’t e-mail that often. He doesn’t always answer. In the past he would answer with a one word answer sometimes. If I need to talk to him, I call and leave a message on his phone. He will always call back, though it might be a week later.I don’t think he can talk if he is doing something else so he waits until the time is right for him. If I absolutely had to talk to him right away, I would probably leave multiple e-mails and phone messages or have my oldest daughter <em>facebook</em> or <em>aim</em> him. I don’t do facebook or AIM.</p>
<p>Re his summer job – he is working the same job he did last summer, for the math dept. because it is easy. It doesn’t pay a lot, just enough to cover rooom and board for the summer. I finally asked him how many hours a week he works and he told me <em>about 10 hours a week.</em> Now I understand why he wanted the same job again.</p>
<p>NYMomof2: That was how/why I set up my IM account - when son went off to a computer camp several years ago. He was young and I knew I’d never hear from him. LOL</p>
<p>weenie, My son is at CTY and there is no computer access. The only way to communicate is by mail (ha!) or phone. This year I can’t call him, so I am relying on his using the phone card I bought (that he has probably lost, but I told him he could buy another in the bookstore).</p>
<p>The chocolate chip cookies should arrive today. Maybe he’ll notice that the package has been turned into wallpaper with the repeated message, “Call home!” If he doesn’t call, there will be no more cookie deliveries!</p>