Moving away to study when you finish school is an excellent opportunity, that many of us are lucky enough to experience. It’s a great chance not only to further your education and open doors for the future but also to gain valuable life experience. You meet new people and forge close friendships quickly, as everyone bonds over living away from their families for the first time. You’ll learn to cook and to clean. You’ll learn how to manage your money and to live independently. While skills like shopping for food might not seem like a big deal, people that live at home until they are a little older often find that they struggle to adjust to these simple life tasks when they have to.
But, it’s got its downsides. Many new students miss home terribly. Even if they find themselves loving their new-found independence and perfectly capable of looking after themselves, they miss home. They miss their parents and friends, as well as the routines of home life. When they do make trips home, they’re rushed. You’ll often find yourself taking work home, and any free time that you do get is spent with close friends and family.
It’s essential that you keep in touch with extended family too. These are people that have helped shaped your life up to now. They are the people that will always be there for you, and that you can rely on if ever you don’t want to confide in your parents. So, here are some ways that you can keep in touch with your extended family when you are busy studying and living away from home.
Stick to a Routine
It’s not just you that these relationships are important to. If you’ve got a grandparent in a care home like Porthaven, your contact could brighten their day. So, try to stick to a routine with them. Arrange a call once a week, even if it’s just a five-minute check-in.
Get Them Online
In today’s world, your parents are probably online and using social media. But, older relatives might not be. Hook them up. Show them how to use a smartphone, get them online and show them how great video calls can be. Keep in touch on social media as well as with calls, and you might find that you know more about each other’s lives than you did when you lived at home.
Plan Something Big
When you pop home for a weekend, it can feel like there is loads to do. You want to see everyone, there’s undoubtedly washing to do, and you might have errands to run and assignments to complete. You are unlikely to fit everything in and see all of the people that you’d like to. So, make sure you’ve always got something big planned. Book a meal for the whole family or invite everyone around for dinner one night when you know that you’ll be back for a while. You could even arrange a family holiday for the summer, to give everyone a chance to catch up.
