A Simple Way To Better Stay In Touch With Your Family

December 10th, 2012

My family is spread out. With work, travel, and varying timezones, it’s difficult to stay in touch. I think it’s easy to say that all you need to do is try a bit harder, but it’s trickier than that. Even if you do manage to consistently give (each of) your folks a call, conversations always seem limited to just highlights and none of the “just because.”

I’ve honestly pondered this for awhile. How can you help families, no longer living in the same household, better stay-in-touch? Well, I’m glad to say that a recent simple solution has really helped my family out.

Just put everybody on a group text message. If you’re a brood of Apple elitists, even better. You can add Mom’s iPad, Dad’s iPhone and everyone else on iMessage and create an ongoing conversation that even works overseas.

For me it’s been about making it so easy just to pop in and say hello. Making it natural for your bro to check-in on you, making it a no-brainer to ask mom for that Asian salad dressing recipe, and making it dead-simple for dad to share an embarrassing baby pic of you he stumbled upon.

A couple text messages obviously can’t replace a lengthy catchup. But, if you limit your contact to just a couple meaty blocks of time a month, my hunch is you might miss out on a host of the small things that make family… family.