After writing about how I stayed connected with my family while in Victoria, this post definitely falls in the “so obvious I feel funny writing it” category. Nevertheless, as our family piled into the van this week, on our way to visit grandparents, aunts, and uncles, I thought about an essential technology that we use so often it no longer seems like technology. In short, we keep in touch with those far-flung family members using video chat programs on our phones and computers.
Given the extremely tough job market, academics often must live where their job happens to be, rather than in the part of the country where their friends and family are. This was the case for our family. When I got a job offer in Wisconsin, we packed up and left my family in Virginia. Our kids were used to having their grandparents two hours away; now they would be 16 hours away.
Fortunately, several years before we moved we had convinced my parents to buy an iMac with a built-in webcam. Our kids were already in the habit of video chatting with their grandparents almost every night. Sometimes they had things to tell each other; other times we’d just leave the camera on so that the grandparents could peek into our house and see what the grandkids were up to. We’ve embraced this mode of connecting even more since moving, both with the grandparents and with aunts and uncles (interestingly, with aunts and uncles we often connection through Facetime on our phones, rather than through a desktop app). Often we leave the camera running on important days. This past Christmas morning, for instance, we pointed the camera at the tree so that grandparents could feel a part of things as the kids opened their presents.
The important thing is the the kids see and hear their extended family members often. When we do visit—as we’ll be doing over the next few weeks—there are no awkward days of reacquaintance. The kids know their grandparents quite well, even though we live far away from them.
There are, of course, many video chat apps out there: iChat, AIM, Google Talk, Skype, etc. Any of them can help families connect. If you’re facing a move, I would strongly recommend arranging a video chat network with those you want your family to stay connected to. If that means buying grandma an iPad—you might consider doing so. How about you? How have you coped with the distance that academic life can often place between family members? Tell us about it in the comments.
[Creative Commons licensed photo by Flickr user sjdunphy.]
