Calls from your adult children

We hear from t kids multiple times a week. We text quite a lot and I love the little messages - an off photo of the grandkids , did you see this in tyke news, just things like that

I used to resent my late mother interrupting my Sunday evenings with a phone call “Just wondering how you are”

I can completely understand that, but just have a vision of an elderly mum, Sunday evening stretching ahead and thinking, “I’ll just give twiglet a ring”.

Not a criticism, we are probably all guilty of something similar, but as I age, I think ‘there but for the grace of God….’

We didn't have a phone when my parents were alive until their very last year. I suppose when you have to walk to the phone box (pre mobile) you do call less. Maybe we called with more purpose though. I tried to call once a week but sometimes it would be longer.

We are fortunate that we have WhatsApp and know what's going on with all our adult children and their families.

There are family conversations on WhatsApp nearly every day with our adult children. Yesterday all 5 of were chatting about different things - the best craft glues for textiles, "Europark" Germany and other bits and bobs. This is normal. Over 100 separate comments.

One has sent a political cartoon from America already this morning.

We keep in touch in an ordinary "chatting" way. I like this casual contact - it is like having them in a room together.

My mother-in-law can't manage WhatsApp - but has asked my husband and I to not call her twice a day anymore.
She was fed up with feeling she had to chat at least once a day!
Now she has learnt to use the text facility on her phone. She texts us when she's up and dressed - usually she just says "all ok" or "I'm fine" and again when she's ready for bed. My husband replies.
We are only half an hour drive away so visit regularly.

I wonder if calls are generally less frequent even though more of us have phones?

DS calls us at least twice a week. As my mother got older I would call 2/3 times a day as would my sister and my daughter. She also had visits from us on an almost daily basis.

DS rings once a week. DD one long call a week on a Sunday afternoon and at other times if there is something she needs to talk to us about. She is single and lives alone and sometimes needs to discuss issues with someone. Currently the long complex house buying/selling she is involved in.

We are all on Facebook and also email each other a lot, again, usually to discuss something specific.

When I was 6 I was in Great Ormond Street Hospital in London for several months, when the family home was in Carlisle. My grandparents visited and my parents wrote to me without fail every week.

When I later went to boarding school this absolutely regular weekly letter writing continued. Every Sunday after lunch my parents sat down and wrote letters and then got them in the post box for the Sunday evening collection(!!!!!) so that my sister and I got the letters on Monday. At school we had a Letter Writing prep on Sunday morning when we all were expected to write home. This continued all through university. I too stuck to the sitting down every Sunday and writing home.

As we all got telephones the letter was replaced by Sunday phone calls and that has continued through. As I said at the start, both our children ring us for a long conversation on Sundays.

geekesse
It’s because we and the 3 girls have busy and interesting lives that we do chat a lot. We have lots to share 😁

My mother and I exchanged weekly letters for a long time after I left home.
They didn't have a telephone. As they aged, we all clubbed together to have a landline installed but I think we carried on writing weekly letters.

petra

geekesse
It’s because we and the 3 girls have busy and interesting lives that we do chat a lot. We have lots to share 😁

But surely if your lives are that busy you will not have time to chat a lot

I live by myself, each morning as I sit down to eat my brekkie, I send a messenger OK to my daughter who lives and works locally. If she did not receive this by 9.00 am any morning, she would try to telephone me, if no reply, she would come round.

Simple, easy and cheap. So, at the very longest I could go without someone finding me if I was is 24 hours. Have done this for several years.

My eldest daughter always has a weekly 'catch-up' call each weekend, which I really look forward to and can often last most of an hour. My other two daughters ring me occasionally, more likely for me to ring them and also my son similar.

However all of them phone me on my birthday - which is rather pleasant.

Norah

I'm not a fan of constant "ringing mum up" and our children know me. They email unless their impending arrival will be too soon. Odd, I know.

😆😆 Well we are odd too. We don't have or want that much daily contact with anyone, but do get calls every now and again for a good chat. We also Zoom as a family, started during lockdown as one son was in NZ and kept up since then as we don't live close to each other. I think the ACs actually talk to each other more than to us as their children are friends as well as cousins.

I suspect if either of us ends up alone calls will become daily but at the moment we are quite happy not to be phoned too often.

My late MIL always expected my husband to ring her every evening. Often he had nothing to tell her since the previous night but had to ring or she got upset.

Why on earth would an adult child ring their parents three times a day? I wouldn't want anyone to ring me three times a day. That's not caring, it's obsessive and annoying!

After my mother died, both my sister and I began to ring our father more than once a week. In a very short time we were told that one call a week was quite sufficient and it was what he was used to.

I rang my mother every week whilst I was working, but after I retired, and they were aging (middle/ late 80s) I started to ring her every day. I sometimes spoke to my lovely father but mostly just to mum. This continued for several years, up to and after my father died, and then until mum was able to move to live near to me. Then I visited her every day, and if I couldn’t sometimes, my husband would visit.

We see both our sons almost every weekend and sometimes in the week too, but we have a family WhatsApp group and chat on that most days. Our daughter is in New Zealand and she joins in the WhatsApp chats, but often needs to offload because of her difficult situation there, and also asks for advice from her brother as he is a lawyer. We also video WhatsApp with her and the children a couple of times a week.

We have friends like this. One of their sons lives with them, but every time we meet up the son phones them for a chat! If my son calls we either don’t answer or tell him we’re out and will call him later.

If my kids 38 and 41 called me I would always answer no matter where I was if inconvenient I would just say that and call them back

My daughter lives locally and phones me every time she gets in the car lol, for someone to talk to. My son libes an hour and a quarter away and we haven’t spoken since May sometime. We have lots and lots of WhatsApp correspondence. I have called him but no reply so I just leave it. He’ll ring when he has time. They have a two year old and a new baby so life is very busy. I guess we are just “there” so familiarity and all that. One day we won’t be then we’ll be missed !