Call home when nothing’s wrong. Parents get enough of the emergency calls.

Contact that only happens during a crisis teaches everyone to associate your name with bad news. A parent who hears from you when something has gone wrong starts to brace slightly whenever the phone rings, and the relationship narrows into a support line. The ordinary calls are what keep it a relationship.

Ring this week with nothing to report and no request attached. Talk about something small and let the call be short. Doing it a few times changes the register entirely, and it makes the difficult calls, when they come, much easier to make.