Ways of connecting with your children or grandchildren when you’re far away

In August 2016, parenting author and educator Maggie Dent put a post on Facebook addressing a variety of ways to connect with children or grandchildren when you’re away from them.

DISCLAIMER: These tips are shared from our Facebook community – please do your own research when making choices for your family. Also please note we have left people’s entries largely unedited so there will be imperfections in grammar and spelling.

The original Facebook post:

Maggie Dent
FB community: can you share your wisdom? I recently heard from a pretty savvy grandma who is looking for different ways to connect with her grand daughter via technology. She says they’re already posting photos on the Tinybeans app, they use FaceTime and she’s downloaded a drawing program called Drawtime… we’d love to hear what you do to connect when you’re away from your children or grandkids. FIFOs, parents who are separated, family living overseas… please share your ideas whether they’re old school or using technology.

Main feedback provided from this post:

• Letters, parcels and packages delivered to letterboxes lights up faces and bridges distance between loved ones (it also encourages the return of mail)
• Pictures in frames, world maps and items of relevance that are linked to special people
• Personalised audio stories, recorded and sent via technology (ie Quality Time app)
• Private family groups on Facebook or Instagram for regular communication and sharing pictures
• Skype, webcams and live family interaction
• A variety of applications that are available for download that promote and assist communication between devices: Snap Chat, Cisco Spark, Seesaw, Tocomail, Words With Friends, Facetime, Touchnote, Wechat, Kin2kin and Viber.
• Catching up over the telephone and conversing through e-mail

View all responses in this handy tips sheet, downloadable as a PDF:
ways-of-connecting-with-your-children-from-afar