Reply to Dad needs a nightly phone call. Sometimes not doable...

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "Dad needs a nightly phone call. Sometimes not doable..."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]My husband’s parents complain about never talking to his sister, but her kids are 1 and 3 and I try to remind them how hard it was for us when our kids were that age. They forget because my kids are 6 and 9 and they FaceTime and text grandparents on their own from their iPads. Also my kids are capable of sitting still and having a 3-5 min conversation about their day!

Here’s a few ideas - 
1. Get him one of those picture frames that gets new photo’s automatically over WiFi so he gets new photos a few times a week from you. 
2. Get MarcoPolo or get in the habit of recording a short video with the kids and texting it at a time that is convenient for you. 
3. Go through all the stuff the kids bring home from school or daycare and “pick some things for Grandpa” and mail them once a week. My husband made us a stack of envelopes with stamps already addressed to family members and we send them kid art. 
4. If your kids are a bit older, they can read a book to him or they can read the same book and talk about it. Get Grandpa to read Harry Potter or something. 
5. Call your Dad while you are at sports. Put him on FaceTime and point the camera at the kid who is playing while you chat for 5-10 min. 
6. Have the kids call him from the back seat while you drive home. 
7. Get the kids and Grandpa on Facebook Messenger for kids. But here’s the key part - have Grandpa download the kids version of Messenger too. That way they can play games and do silly Snapchat type filters together. 
8. FaceTime from the dinner table. We put our iPad on a tripod / stand and all sit on the same side of the table while we eat and talk to relatives. It’s great because the kids are captive.

Finally it takes a lot of coaching to build phone manners and relationship skills in kids. We try to model it, but we also explicitly prep them for calls. We ask them before the call “what’s a story we can tell grandma? What’s a question we can ask Grandma about her day/week/etc.”  We also make sure we keep calls short but frequent. Kids are more willing to call grandparents a few times a week when they know it’s usually 5 min, 10 min max. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics