I wrote a post a week ago, edited it last night, and this morning it was not edited, and my screen was at my list of posts instead of in the post itself as I’d left it. I used my usual methods for getting back a more recent version, and all failed. I briefly wondered if I’d DREAMED editing it, but I think it’s more likely a cat walked on the keyboard and screwed everything up.
I am agitating right now over communication with my college-aged kids. They are not as communicative as I would like (though not deeply or alarmingly uncommunicative), and I am not sure what if anything to do about that. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances with college-aged kids, and it’s a common topic. One common approach is “I pay for their phone, so they have to communicate with me as much as I tell them to,” and that is an approach I understand but it’s not an approach that works for me. For one thing, I don’t like to tie their behavior to my money, considering how near in the future I am hoping they will be paying for their own lives with their own money and I will no longer have that method of compelling them.
The approach I WISH I’d set up, and maybe it’s not too late: some of my friends/acquaintances simply informed their children that they were expected to check in once a week, if only to say they were alive and well. Like, “Here are your X-long twin sheets, here is your shower caddy, and here are the expectations for communication.” That seems very smart. Every time I think about doing it NOW, when they are already at college and have been there for some time, it doesn’t feel like it works to say it anymore. It seems like it works only when it’s part of the Heading For College process. Well, I can still do this with the three younger kids. I’ll just write the older two off. (This is one of the many ways in which I have been glad to have more than the standard two children: when I mess up with the first one, and then I mess up differently with the second one, I’m still not out of chances.)
[Edited to add: Some of the comments are making me think I should have clarified how often I am contacting them. Right now I am sending them a chatty family-newsy email (“Henry got braces”/”Elizabeth joined such-and-such a high school club”/”The twins have the same teacher you guys had for math”) approximately once every month to six weeks, plus occasional/irregular much-shorter texts/emails for very specific things such as “We just got another letter from your college forwarded from our old address–can you see if you can straighten that out?”/”What day are your exams over, so I can book a motel room?” We also all send them Snapfish pictures of the cats pretty often. We never phone them.]
Completely unrelatedly, I am looking for flannel sheets with deep pockets: Paul and I were wildly overdue for a new mattress, and finally acquired one, and all our old sheets are popping off the corners. I know they sell little things to force the corners to stay put, but in my experience those are not only a hassle but also eventually tear holes in the sheets. I just want to buy deeper sheets. I was browsing online but of course the reviews are putting me into an indecision spiral: “These are the best sheets!!”/”They don’t even feel like flannel”/”They ripped almost right away”/”I recommend these to everyone I know!!”/”They’re not actually deep-pocketed.”
We have great flannel sheets that are the Threshold brand from Target. We have a really tall mattress and they are plenty deep.
Same here! Those Threshold sheets have wonderfully deep pockets in my experience. I have flannel and regular. They also have a tag sewn into the elastic on the fitted sheet that says “top or bottom” so you don’t have to use trial and error to get the sheet on in the right direction.
Will also recommend the sheets from Target. They are the only ones I buy now.
At my Target the Threshold flannel sheets are on clearance!!
I believe it’s never too late to set some expectations/express your preferences about communication. “I want to know more about what’s going on with you than the occasional text. I’d like us to talk every Sunday; you can pick the time that works for you.”
Or
“Now that you’ve settled into this semester, what day/time works for you to make a weekly call home?” Etc.
Or
“I tend to have 20 free minutes when I’m making dinner and would love to use that time to catch up – could I call you for 15 minutes on X evening?”
My parents always told my brother and me that they expected us to call home on Sundays. I did so much more than my brother. I really ought to still call every Sunday, but I will admit to being terrible about it since I’m often out and about and then when I’m free it’s their dinner time or ours, etc. When I was growing up, my mom spoke to her own parents every Sunday and my dad STILL does with his 103-year old father. It can be done!
I am now vowing to be better about calling my parents. Also I need to be modeling that behavior for my own daughter. As an only child, maybe she’ll feel more guilty if she doesn’t call me once she’s left us. Or as my friend pointed out, when she is grown I can just call her and hope that she will chat with me whenever I catch her at a good time. I actually would welcome my mom doing that because it would feel less like a standing appointment that I keep missing/failing at.
This is a great script!
When my 14yo was gone for 2+ weeks last summer, I told him he needed to send me a photo via text every day. One day I got a picture of an empty sidewalk, but hey, it was contact. I would send him cute pictures of our cat.
Land’s End has been my go-to for sheets (generally flannel and jersey-knit) FOREVER although I think their quality has declined somewhat they are still very satisfactory. Definitely have deep pockets and elastic all the way around makes them stay on the bed very easily, although it does make it harder to fold them neatly (not my number one priority). Definitely don’t pay full price, I generally only buy when I have a code for 40% off.
I was exactly going to advise what you put in your third paragraph before I got there. However I don’t think it’s too late! You could even say “I know it’s probably felt like I’m bugging you to communicate more and I think we’re both frustrated. Could we check in really quickly once a week on Sundays at 11am? [or whatever time] I think that would make both of us feel better.” I remember feeling really annoyed at my parent for constantly calling my dorm room landline (haha when there was such a thing) and I would have way preferred not having to worry about it/feel guilty not calling back knowing we were going to talk for 15 mins on a set day later.
Also I love these flannel sheets from Target! Just bought in October and still going strong. Our mattress is quite thick and these work great without saying they have deep pockets. https://www.target.com/p/solid-flannel-sheet-set-threshold-153/-/A-50699378
I don’t have any suggestions about the sheets but instead came to commiserate because awhile back our electric blanket bit the dust. I went on line to look at reviews with an eye to getting another, but instead got bogged down in the range of reviews for every single blanket. I got so overwhelmed that I was not able to make any kind of choice. I finally just tossed the job to H who went online and bought the first one in our price range and color and guess what? It’s been fine. I mean, I figured it would be but the massive amount of disparate reviews just shut down my decisionmaking process. Next time I swear I’ll just buy the first thing that seems fine and not look at a single review.
Might I suggest http://www.reviewmeta.com? Not fool-proof, but you can enter the link to the amazon product and it’ll guesstimate it’s accuracy and also provide suggestions on better/more legit rated items.
I was recently looking for a watch-winder for my spouse and went down the rabbit hole of reviews. Plugged in the one I thought I’d buy and review meta spit out a better option.
I have become so overwhelmed by reviews- and fake reviews!- that I can hardly buy anything anymore. I just go to Wirecutter.com and buy what they recommend. I find their system much simpler than consumer reports. Wirecutter has a recommended, budget, and upgrade pick for most things.
Also fakespot.com to see if reviews are faked. I didn’t really think this was a thing until I bought an awful calendar and wrote a bad review. I got badgery emails and offers of a return, full refund, replacement item, and cash to change my 1 star review. I’ve been looking to shop at non-amazon places for a few months, but that really sealed the deal for me.
My son just graduated in December but still lives in apartment near campus. I do almost all of the reaching out, by text, about twice a week. Kids these days are HORRIBLE on the phone and I personally think I can get more out of him by text. I find our phone conversations painful. He comes home for holidays, birthdays and other important things and he’s very talkative and happy. I cherish those times and try not to let the lack of regular communication upset me. I hope it will improve as he gets older and chalk a lot of it up to being a young guy.
LL Bean has the best, warmest flannel sheet in my experience. I have some Target Threshold flannel sheets too in a cute pattern and they are good, but not as nice as the LL Bean ones. Both are deep enough for our mattress.
Yes! The best sheets ever and last forever(ish). However, priced accordingly.
I really like Lands’ End flannel sheets. It’s true that they are not cheap, though I find that I can buy them on sale easily enough. And they last forever. So, that’s my vote.
Also, thank you for the advice on communicating with college aged kids. My oldest is heading off in a couple of years and I like the “begin as you mean to go on” philosophy. Good to establish the habit while they are still impressionable, before they’ve fully launched into adult life.
My husband was terrible about calling his parents, but partially because they were so very needy/ clingy. The final straw was when they called all of his friends to find him. It was bad. Don’t do that…
Uhhhhh…my husband is terrible about calling his parents to this day. He’s turning 47 this year.
They email occasionally. We live 40 minutes away and they will plan the infrequent family dinners via email vs a phone call.
We’re communicating with my first-year college student mostly by text. Usually we text him and he answers; occasionally he initiates. He communicates with his younger sibling mainly by meme. When I was in college, my mom and I had a weekly call, but I don’t think that would work. We’ve Skyped twice and it felt awkward. No one knew what to say.
I remember being in college and just wanting to miss my mom before calling her. If she called every couple days, I wasn’t missing her yet so I didn’t have much to talk about. But if she waited a week I’d usually miss her and call then and be much more communicative. How long do you think they would go before they miss hearing from you?
“(This is one of the many ways in which I have been glad to have more than the standard two children: when I mess up with the first one, and then I mess up differently with the second one, I’m still not out of chances.)” Hands down, my very favorite part of this post and; it makes me re-think (far too late, of course) our decision to only have the one!
I think a straightforward, “It would mean very much to me if you could call/we could speak at least once a week (or whatever time frame you think appropriate)” might do the trick. Especially if you stress it is a big deal for you. I’m about to throw this approach to having our son come to dinner every once in a while. He hasn’t been here since Christmas! Yes, we’ve seen and talked to him since, but not here at home.
The older two are boys right? That fact is 80% of the communication issue- in my very unscientific opinion based fully on anecdotes. Males just don’t communicate, it seems. When I want something done by my brothers or my brother-in-law, I know enough to contact their wives instead. My husband talks to his Dad maybe once every 3-4 months, and we don’t really have a relationship with his Mom (I think they talk once or twice a year). On the other side, I talk to my parents at least once a week, and reluctantly call my father-in-law once a month to make sure he’s still alive.
I was coming here to say this too, and to wonder if communication will be vastly different once Elizabeth goes off to school. My daughter is a junior in high school and is already talking about how much she will miss me and how often she plans to text and call, AND is already coaching my 13 year old son. “I know you don’t talk to mom that much but she’ll ge lonely when I go away, so ask about her day sometimes”.
Idk, I’m a woman, and when I was at university (college is part of our regular school here depending on the branch of school you start going to during what I think would be high school, so we live at home), I also barely communicated. So I think it’s a type-thing more so than a gender thing.
I did visit quite frequently, but calls in between mainly happened when my mom called me, while to this day, she and my sister have daily talks on the phone which I wouldn’t know how to fill.
I had a standing date with my folks that they called me every Sunday. It could get to be a bit much since they are divorced, so it was at least two HOURS of my Sundays spent on the phone. 30 years later, my mother STILL calls me almost every Sunday. I may not always have time to pick UP the phone, but we still probably talk at least twice a month. I don’t talk to my Dad as often (although it is still usually on a Sunday!), which is a shame since his conversations are usually more interesting.
When my oldest first went away, we Skyped as a a family almost every week. I noticed the quality of the conversations weren’t too great…just too awkward with our family of five at home all trying to talk at once to her. I noticed my conversations with her were much better when I called without the rest of the fam watching/listening in! The Skype sessions slowed down as she got into more difficult classes and got a part-time job, though. Now we only talk very few weeks.
Anyway, I keep thinking I should start the Every Sunday thing myself so that we can both get into the habit. (It is no question that my own ADHD interferes with my remembering to call!)
I just wanted to let you know that it always makes my day when you have a new post. You’re so chatty, and I love reading your posts. Thanks for being you. :)
I wonder if you paid attention, or looked back at your text string to see if they respond more at a certain time? If anyone could track and notice that, I think it would be you! I like the advance notice of how to prepare my kids for college!
Maybe they would respond to shorter, more casual communications more readily? Like a text with a funny meme labeled “Meme Monday. Love you!” every Monday. Or a funny pic from their childhood every Thursday with “Throwback Thursday, love you!” They might eventually respond regularly.
I have had really, really good luck with Pinzon flannel sheets from Amazon. Good price and they fit our pillow top mattress really well. Soft as heck too.
https://www.amazon.com/Pinzon-Cotton-Flannel-Bed-Sheet/dp/B01F2MYFVU
My oldest one is pretty good at texting, so he would send texts every few days when he was in college. My middle son does not communicate. At all. Doesn’t answer his phone, doesn’t answer texts. I will share with you my secret. When I started to get seriously concerned because it had been so long since I’d heard from him, I changed the Netflix password. I would get a call within a day. :)
Genius.
This is amazing, I love it!
Holy pants, you’re a genius.
I think the “must call on a certain day” thing should be avoided – the every Sunday call for my husband has made it all into such a duty and no pleasure event. Heaven forbid he misses the call because it’s the weekend and we are out doing things because he will get a heaping help of guilt voicemail….I feel sad when I think about my kid avoiding that call one day.
My family is scattered and we all use a group texting app like Whatspp (but an encrypted version called Threema) and it works really well. You can drop a line about the hockey game, send a pic, chat – and we have different groups within the apps for our Mom one on one with each of us, the sisters, the sibs etc.
I agree with you about not making an “appointment” on a certain day. Our standing appointment with my parents is Sunday. It’s gotten to the point that if I miss a Sunday, well, I might as well just wait until next Sunday to call instead of calling during the week. Of course, I worry about my parents because apparently they have some weird kind of phone that only receives calls and can’t make calls. If I miss more than one week in a row, I get the snarky “oh, so you do remember our phone number” comments. I’ve given up on trying to explain that calls can be made as well as received.
Oh! And I really like Garnet Hill’s flannel sheets and they have deep pockets.
Thank you for making me aware that this may one day be an issue (we have a soph in high school but he is already not very communicative, so…)! Lots of good ideas.
And about sheets… We have flannel sheets from The Company Store and I’ve never had a problem with them. I do have a problem with the name of the company, though. Who names their linen company after an exploitative system like that? It’s like you have to buy them with scrip. But I digress. And they are good sheets.
I am 100% certain that boys are very different from girls with regard to communication, so my response may not be as applicable, but when my older daughter left for college she and I started a “streak” on Snapchat and it is currently unbroken, over a year and a half later. We exchange one Snap every day, sometimes she just sends a picture of her cat or her sleepy face but at least I know she still exists. For teens/young adults who like Snapchat, that might be a good option.
Beyond that, we talk on the phone maybe once or twice a week, Facetime maybe once a month, and she’s pretty good about responding to texts. My younger daughter is heading off to college in the fall, and we’ll see how that goes–I suspect I’ll hear less often from her but am planning the Snapchat strategy with her as well.
I think you can share with them that you expect to hear from them once a week. Never too late! My senior calls us constantly. He is very far away and I suspect a little homesick. My freshman is much more self reliant and has a very taxing schedule/way busier. Even he reaches out aboit once a week or two. I love that you still have chances since you gave enough kids. Ha!
We could use a new mattress so no help in the sheets department.
My parents definitely added in Communication Expectations *after* i’d been at school for a while (and they realized they’d basically never hear from my flighty-assed self again if they didn’t). So we had a standing I Must Call At Some Point Every Weekend rule. They were often home on weekend afternoons after doing errands in the mornings, I guess, and I was obviously never awake on weekend mornings (and out on weekend nights) so it worked pretty well. Given how little this generation uses phone calls though, maybe there is a text modification that could happen? or go the other direction, FaceTime for 5 mins every sunday afternoon! :)
I’m a woman in my 30’s, but I would love if my parents reached out to me more frequently just to chat. I think they think I’m busy (which I am), so they shouldn’t bother me. But sometimes it feels like they aren’t interested! Maybe you’d have better luck with calling them once every week or two?
Jessica-I’m glad you mentioned this! I do think that parents pull back, hoping not to seem overbearing. So I guess the lesson is we just keep plugging away, showing our kids we are interested in their lives.
I find this type of discussion so interesting! It’s one of those “man, am I not like most folks!” situations. From the time I left home at 21 until my mom passed away 4 years ago, I talked to her every single day (unless maybe I was sick or fell asleep early). That was 30 years of daily conversation. I realize my relationship with her was probably very different than a lot of people – we were best friends. Was she a little annoying to me – of course. Was I a constant pleasure – no. But boy, do I miss those phone calls. I still think “I need to tell Mom so and so” on a regular basis.
As a university student whose parents paid for a chunk of her tuition I made a point of calling each parent (my parents had divorced years earlier) once a week, usually on the weekend.
As an adult living back in my home city I hadn’t thought to examine this, but I see my mother almost every weekend as my husband and kids and I are invited to her place for dinner weekly. If something prevents our weekly dinner we tend to text in a desultory fashion as the whim strikes us, but will phone if there’s some juicy thing going on and it would take forever to text about it. On the other hand, I talk to my father almost exclusively in person, and sometimes I’ll see him a couple of times within a month if there are a lot of birthdays or other occasions clumped together, and other times a few months will go by. He never calls me except for my birthday, and I never call him unless it’s his birthday or Father’s Day and I can’t manage to see him on the actual day.
My sister hasn’t phoned or texted our mother since last July (she last visited in June, and the texts exchanged in July had to do with my mother letting her know that her stepfather was in the hospital and it was potentially serious) and she just included Mom in a group email or two at Christmas and my mom is at the point of telling people that they’re pretty much estranged if it comes up in conversation. I’m almost 100% sure my sister hasn’t phoned or texted my dad either, though he seems to hold it against her less.
After having said all that, my expectation for my kids when they go off to university was that they also get in touch at least once a week. It hadn’t occurred to me that they wouldn’t do so voluntarily, but I have no issue letting them know if I find they don’t have the same assumption.
Having said all that.
Apparently I started the last paragraph, went up to fix something, then started it again without noticing I’d already written something that subsequently got pushed downwards. The second “Having said all that.” isn’t a lead-in to anything, so don’t be in suspense!
Having all boys, I frequently think and worry about future communication issues. Mu husband is so great at keeping in touch with all his family, so hopefully they’ll take after him. I’ll echo what others said about WhatsApp group texting. I have a group text with my husband’s and my own immediate family and everyone’s spouses. It’s wonderful. We can post kid pics, jokes, leave video messages, and there seems to be zero pressure for quick responses. My husband’s younger brother is not married and doesn’t keep in great touch, but he reads the group texts and responds periodically. Less pressure than just texting his parents, I think. Anyway, long way to say, WhatsApp groups texting has been great for me and maybe you’d like it too.
I have nothing helpful to say, just that I’m in Australia and have never heard of that part of a fitted sheet being called “pockets” (what do we call it here? maybe that? hell if I know!!).
So I had a very odd moment of wondering just what do Americans KEEP in their sheet pockets that they need while sleeping? Books? Snacks? Tax paperwork? Why don’t I have pockets in my sheets for if I wake up and want a KitKat? Whyyyy?
Now I need sheets with deep pockets and also SNACK POCKETS
Ha! I saw this at target. Maybe in the teen section?
Insulated/warming ones, so you could have Hot Pockets sheet pockets!
That was solid, Slim. Now in a Jim Gaffigan voice. ;)
I have two young teen sons and have already been worrying about the communication thing as they aren’t big talkers and my husband is terrible about communicating with his own parents. For now I’m trying to sett the expectation that they don’t have to say a lot, but they do have to respond – always. A smiley face emoji, a thumbs up, even a “K” is acceptable. I think more frequent, low pressure communication keeps the door open for the times when they do feel chatty. After school I tell them that I just want to talk for TWO MINUTES about their day and I stick to the two minutes. Sometimes they want to talk beyond the two minutes and share lots of stuff about their day and it’s great. Most of the time I just get grunts and “yep”, “no” replies and we stop at two minutes with no guilt or prodding. I try as hard as I can to be EASY BREEZY (even though I AM NOT easy breezy on the inside…talk to meeee, I love yooooouuuu!!!).
My husband rarely talks to his mom and I think that contributes to the calls being so awkward and no one even knows what to ask beyond “how are you?”. I try to think of something interesting to say but after 3 months without talking, sharing that my big excitement that week was that I finally went and got my jeans hemmed, doesn’t seem worthy of discussion.
Does Paul communicate separately with the boys? I will say my husband communicates a lot more with his dad, primarily in the form of sharing interesting articles they’ve read recently. Neither of them are big phone talkers and this works well for them.
I wonder if you could ask your boys for a weekly two minute call just because “you want to hear their voice”. I think if it’s low pressure and they know it really will just be quick and guilt free they will do it. This will hopefully give you some information about their daily life so you can send a mid-week text saying “good luck on your chem lab” or something specific to their life that doesn’t require a response beyond “thanks” or “fine”. Hopefully then if something exciting happens they will think to text you, or share with you on the weekly two minute call and it will naturally turn into 10 minutes or more that week. Shoot, I just remembered you don’t like talking on the phone, so maybe you could make it a weekly five minute text chat instead of a call.
I have also resigned myself that I will likely be the one who has to reach out to my boys more than they reach out to me. I remind myself that my goal is to keep a relationship with my child, not win a contest of who calls/texts whom more. I love my parents and have a good relationship with them, and even I have been guilty of avoiding a call b/c I’m just not in the mood to talk.
This is my plan for when my boys leave for college, but I have no idea if it will work in real life so I am curious about what you do and whether it works. Keep us posted and good luck!
Wait, @Carrie, are you me??? Ha. My boys are 13 and almost-15.
Except my husband doesn’t communicate very well with either of his parents (the phone is awkward with his dad due to hearing loss & his parents don’t text, so it’s pretty much email only).
I have also set the expectation that my kids text me back. I like the idea posted above of snapchat too.
Maybe with the older ones, talking through a messenger-app could work, so you can still hear their voices even if it isn’t a direct talk? Here in Germany, Whatsapp is super popular, and one feature is the voice mail.
It’s much easier to just talk freestyle on your phone for a bit to update someone on your life when you can do that for two minutes while waiting somewhere, when you wouldn’t use that two minutes to call someone because it’s such a limited amount of time. So the older ones might feel less like you’re making a demand on their time (even though 15 minutes on a certain day shouldn’t be too much if we’re being honest) when you simply ask for a message exchange on Sundays. You record one at some point Saturday or Sunday – partly as a reminder – , and then they do the same in return at some point that weekend. Might go over better than a standing appointment for an actual call. I wasn’t much of a caller back in my uni days, but if that technology had been available then, I’d most likely have communicated more.
And has the added bonus that you can listen to the message over and over if you miss them, and also do so later when they are much more grown up and you want to look back.
My family all has it, so we also have a group chat where anyone can leave a post at any time, so we all get short updates every now and then, or can share something silly. Maybe that would be a nice way for the younger siblings to have occasional contact with the older ones, too.
The part with the reminders about something or info-exchange i’d still try to keep to text though, because it is very annoying to have to listen to several audio files just to find the one where someone mentions some important date or address.
Totally off topic, but I’d love to hear how to chose your mattress. We need a new one and I’m dreading the process of trying to find something we can live with for 10 years.
That same dread kept us procrastinating for AGES. We finally just went into a mattress store and had the salesperson sell us one. We were lucky and got someone non-slick; he still of course tried to sell us the $4500 mattress with the $2500 power frame, but he also walked us through the whole process, first of choosing soft vs. medium vs. firm, then of choosing among various TYPES of mattresses (springs, foam, purple, I don’t know), and then showing us which mattresses in the store were the firmness/type we had selected. That was like six, so that made it easier, and two of them were outside our maximum price, and two of them were less comfy to us, and so then we decided basically between two.
For me, it also took a teeth-clenching commitment of going into it thinking I would neither select the best mattress for us, nor get the best price, but that getting pretty much ANY new mattress was going to be an improvement, and that Getting This Task Done was better than Not.
I read reviews of all the ones you could order online to look for a match to what we wanted (soft on top, firmer down below the soft layer, edges we wouldn’t slide off of), reminded myself that it could be returned for a full refund within 3 months and we could try something else, and picked one at a price point that seemed good to me. We ended up with the softer Logan and Cove and decided to keep it, so whew!
Have you heard of the app Voxer? It’s basically like leaving someone a voicemail. Personally, I love to just say something quick or tell a story or whatever without the chance of actually having to speak to someone 😬😂 Then the person you send it to can reply in the same way. Maybe something like that could work for your family? Like middle ground between a text and a phone call?
Also we love the threshold sheets from target too! I think the regular cotton ones are a bit deeper than the flannel but we like them both.
I’ve found with my older kids that having a family group chat (either on messenger, instagram or whatsapp) works well. It’s not great for in depth conversations but they check in frequently and it’s very low pressure. We will often share something we think the others will find funny like memes etc as well as the normal chit chat but that seems to be a medium that engage with well.
I like the idea of using an app like Snapchat or Whatsapp to get their attention. It seems like actual voice messages are total anathema to anybody under 40. Family group text? Do the younger kids have phones? Maybe they could elicit more casual conversation with the two college guys.
I went to college not too long ago (graduated 2014) and I had a similar issue starting out. I don’t think I contacted my parents once the first month of college. And then I got a call from my mom saying, ok, we’ve given you your space, but you still need to contact us so we know you’re alive and well. So she established a rule that I start calling her every Sunday. After that, if I didn’t contact her by later afternoon/early evening, she would just text me saying, “I’m waiting for my Sunday call!” And really, it was a great rule. After that, I contacted her every Sunday and if I had a test or was doing something with friends, when I got her text later in the day, I would just ask if I could call her Monday instead (which she was always flexible with, just as long as she got the call basically). She ended up making the same rule for my sister and it worked out great for both of us! We still call on Sundays in adulthood now if we realize we’ve had a busy week and haven’t touched base (although more often nowadays, I find I’m calling her multiple times a week.) Personally, this worked really well for me, but I will say that I am a girl and for some reason that I do not fully understand, this seems to be more of a problem for boys. Hope that helps though!
I have been VERY happy with Costco’s Kirkland flannel sheets. Great quality, price, and fit. I bought them for my bed a couple of years ago, liked them, and went on to buy sets for the rest of the beds in my house (variety of mattress types).
When I was in college (before cell phones), I had a standing “phone date” with my parents: every Sunday night at 6pm, we would talk. Maybe you could set up a weekly phone date like that? I picked Sunday nights because I was winding down from the weekend shenanigans and was usually home, tired and gearing myself up for the week. Obv, the date and time (or time range- ie x day of the week between 6-8pm) doesn’t matter as long as it’s something your college kid can maintain consistency with and maybe instead of framing it like “I need to check in with you to get on your case and keep tabs on you” (not that that was your reasoning), but “I miss talking to you and I want to hear about your life,” they’ll be more open to it and it’s not too late to start.
What sheets did you end up getting? I am now sheet shopping, and I am not liking the options that well on my goto place (Lands End)
I dithered over all the suggested options, but since so many were for Target Threshold, and those are the ones with corners that are popping off now that we have the new mattress, I ended up buying none! I’m hoping the new mattress will squash down a little and they’ll fit great: when we first got our old mattress, the sheets were constantly popping off the corners, and then with time that stopped.