By: Alvina Brown

Being a long distance aunt (LDA) is hard, but keeping in touch doesn’t have to be. Skype, FaceTime and texting have made it easy to stay in touch constantly. Keeping in touch is crucial to maintaining a healthy relationship with family and friends, such as watching your nieces and nephews grow up, along with bigger moments like their first day of school. Consider these tips to keep in touch.

1. Skype and FaceTime

Have everyone setup a Skype account. Skype allows you to instant message, share photos and video chat for free. It’s easy to grab your phone, iPad or laptop and bring the family member wherever you are. Sometimes with certain Android phones, Skype comes with the phone making it easy to create an account.

iPhones come with FaceTime, so if one of your family members has a iPhone, all they need is your phone number. To make it easier and not miss FaceTime or Skype calls, setup weekly video chats and times to guarantee family time.

2. Snail Mail and Phone Calls

Getting something in the mail that isn’t a bill is always a surprise. Try writing letters to your nieces and nephews and explain to them what being a pen pal is. Also send them care packages with all of their favorite goodies and love notes.

Staying in touch without hearing someone’s voice is common. Phone calls are so unusual these days that they are like a surprise too. Call your nieces and nephews and chat with them for ten minutes and catch up. Make it a weekly tradition so you’re not missing out on anything.

3. Embrace Social Media

Following your family members on social media like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram is an easy way to see what’s going on in their lives without actually being there.  And go with the hashtag trends, like #TBT (Throwback Thursday)’; #FBF (Flashback Friday); and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) Or, create your own “secret” family hashtag that only you and your nieces and nephews would know.

4. Schedule Visits

It’s hard when family moves away, a family reunion is the best way to see them if it’s been a long time. It can be an extended family reunion or it can a close-knit family reunion. If family reunions aren’t possible, visiting for holidays and other special milestones is often a great excuse to save for and plan a visit. It need not always be that Auntie travels to visit the nieces and nephews. Consider an “annual switch” where one year you visit your nieces and nephews, and the next year, they visit you. As the children get older, they can visit you on their own, for a very special few days (or longer!) of “QualAuntie Time.” You can start a cut online calendar countdown of your upcoming visits.

5. Long Distance Traditions

Creating long distance traditions isn’t only fun but it gives you and your nieces and nephews something to look forward to. It can be getting into a hobby together and Skyping about it later or creating a recipe book, one dish at a time.

Try doing a countdown of gifts towards their favorite holidays. Send them a box of gifts for each day of the countdown and have their parents allow them to open one a day until the holiday. Inform the parents to do the same vice versa so you get gifts from nieces and nephews, like a drawing or a copy of a school project they are proud of to “open up,” too.

What are some fun ways you keep in touch? Do you have fun weekly traditions that weren’t listed? Is there something we missed? Let us know in the comments below.


Photo: TatyanaGl
Published: September 9, 2015