How We Keep Emma Close to a Brother Who's Almost Three

I think the parents have to do most of the work of keeping a college sister close to a little brother, at least for the first stretch, and I know that runs against the usual advice that siblings should own their own relationship. They should. Eventually. But Ben is two years and ten months old and can't dial a phone, and Emma is nineteen years older than he is. If we wait for the two of them to sort it out, we'll get a pleasant, distant relationship that begins around the time Ben turns twelve.

Emma starts her fall semester on September 2nd. Provo is about fifty minutes from our house, which sounds close and is exactly far enough that nobody drops in. Ben was six months old when she left for Brazil and two when she came home, so what he knows of her is a face on a phone and a person who turns up on some Sundays.

Why does the distance hit the little ones harder?

Most of what I've read says younger siblings feel a college departure more sharply than the one who left. One 2008 study found the younger child was sadder than the sibling going away, and the articles describe it as a kind of empty nest for the kid who stays home. Emma is busy and a little thrilled. Ben is two and one of his people is gone most of the week.

He won't say so. He'll say "Emma?" at odd hours, or point at the third row of the Odyssey where she sits when she's with us, and that's about the whole report.

The other thing I read that cheered me up: siblings who stay close through college mostly got there because somebody made connecting easier than drifting.

What does a two-year-old do with a sister who isn't in the room?

Not much talking. At his age what works is her voice and her face, on a regular beat, saying something short about something he can see.

Emma sends him twenty-second videos, addressed to Ben so I know to play them for him and not for myself. He watches with his whole body and then answers the phone like it's a person, at volume. We also have a call on Sunday afternoon after the roast, about ten minutes, with the iPad propped against the flour canister. Ten minutes is long enough to count and short enough that a college student can't resent it and a toddler can't outlast it.

The articles say a younger child should find his sister reaching toward him directly, with Mom out of the middle. I agree, and I'm also the one who texts Emma on Saturday night that Ben has been asking. I don't apologize for that. Our ministering assignment went nowhere for a year because everybody said "any time" and nobody said a time, and I wrote about what that taught me. "Ten minutes tomorrow would mean a lot" is a sentence a tired nineteen-year-old can say yes to. "Call him whenever" is a sentence she'll mean to get to.

Where should the parents stop?

At the door of the call. We can set it up and say why it matters. King Benjamin, in a speech I'd have sworn was about my own son given his name, tells parents to do exactly that:

"But ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another."
(Mosiah 4:15)

He puts it in the same breath as not letting your children go hungry, and I take that to mean it's the same kind of job. A household teaches love on purpose, over years, the way it teaches the rest, but it can't hand that love to one person who isn't there to take it. Emma has to want to be on the other end of it, and she's twenty-one with a full class load and a life in Provo I mostly see on Sundays.

So I try not to make her responsible for repairing the hole she left. What I read was fairly firm that Ben's sadness is ours to manage, and that how she settles in over the first month matters more than a perfect call schedule. If a Sunday call gets skipped during midterms I send a video of Ben myself, and a few text-only weeks in September won't hurt anyone.

Do the older two need something different?

Less of me, mostly. Caleb is eleven and Lily is eight, so they have years of Emma behind them and won't forget her. What they need is contact that skips the middle. Caleb sends her his baseball box scores on Tuesday nights, from my phone, with no commentary. Lily has agreed to write her a letter on paper, as long as it can be the horse stationery.

Emma turns twenty-two on September 18th and we're driving down the next day for dinner. Everybody writes a page in the birthday book, and Ben's will be a drawing, by which I mean one crayon on top of another.

I've also read that a campus visit works best once the semester is a month old and she's found her footing, and that it should be short. A couple of hours is plenty. Ben doesn't need a tour. He needs to be able to picture the place, so that "Emma is at school" turns into a particular door and sidewalk he can ask about at bedtime.

Frequently Asked Questions

My younger child cries when the older sibling leaves. Should I step in?

Say "You miss her, I know" and then stop talking. I used to try cheering Lily up at this point and it never once worked. Then find something small they can look forward to, like the next call.

How often should a college student call a little brother or sister?

Weekly, ten or fifteen minutes. Little kids count in days, so an hour a month means nothing to them. A video or voice memo in between costs the college student about thirty seconds.

Isn't it pushy to remind my college student to stay in touch?

Not if the ask is small and has a time on it. "Ben would love a quick call tomorrow" is a different sentence from "you never call." And assume she's swamped, because she probably is.

What if the college student doesn't seem interested?

Wait out the first semester. Freshman fall eats a person whole, and I'd have been no different. Send easier things in the meantime, like a video of the baby, and don't take the quiet as a verdict.

Pick one small thing your older child can do in under a minute and put a day on it. Send the reminder yourself for as long as it takes, and start this week, before the semester does.

with love, Melissa