Hello? Hello? Anyone there?

Being the parents of three kids, my wife and I have been, for the last 25 years or so, been very (perhaps overly) concerned with always knowing, "Where are you...who are you with...when will we hear from you."  There are all sorts of criminals out there who prey on kids, and I we just had the normal parental concern.

That's all well and good when the kids are little and their safety are the parents' responsibility.  As they were growing up our kids were very good about always letting us know where they were, who they were with, and when they'd be home.  I'm not so naive as to believe that there wasn't a lot going on that they didn't want  us to know about, but everyone played their part in the charade and no one got hurt.

Now, with all three of them grown and out of the house with various levels of independence (two of them are still tethered to us financially) it seems that they have all lost the skills to communicate.

To put it bluntly, the kids don't call.

I don't know if it is different with boys.  I do know that when I was in my 20s there was no way that I wanted my parents, especially my Dad, to know what I was up to.  Still, I managed to call my Mom every so often, and to stop by my Dad's office every couple of weeks, if only to let them know that I was still alive.

(A bit of a diversion, here...When I was about 19 and attending the same college where my Dad taught, I went missing, at least in my parents' view, for such a long time that ol' Dad strolled into the fraternity house where I was living to at least make sure that I was still alive.  He went upstairs and ran into my roommate in the hallway, who was in his underwear, massively hung over and barely coherent at noon.  Dad managed to pry enough information out of my roommate to be convinced that I was still among the living and attending classes.)

Not so with our girls.  Although the oldest and youngest are very outgoing and will talk to anyone at any time about any subject, those conversations seldom include us.  The middle one is intensely private.  "I don't want anyone to know my thoughts," she once told us, when she was little.

So here we are.  My wife and I have done our jobs too well, I guess.  We raised daughters of such an independent nature that they forget, or choose not to, call once in awhile just to let us know that they are still out there.

We don't expect them, and don't really want them, to call every day (at least I don't; the wife, who talks to her Mom almost every day, may feel otherwise).  We would like to hear from them at least once in awhile, though.  Shouldn't there be a happy medium that everyone can be happy with?