Digital flight plans: for parents who are frequent fliers, there are ways to stay connected

Just call her a "fly mom." Each week Shirelle Magee, 37, equipped with cell phone and laptop, heads to her workplace, which happens to be inside a Boeing 757, where she works as a flight attendant.

Once in the air, the Chicago-based single mom faces a situation more challenging than cranky passengers--the need to check in (usually by text message or e-mail) with her 14-year-old daughter Morgan, who attends a private school.

Magee is among a growing group of parents who travel for a living but use convenient technologies--cell phones, BlackBerrys, text messages and videoconferencing--to stay in touch with their children. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2004 there were 219 million people who traveled for business. About 22 percent of them was African-American, according to the travel industry report Minority Traveler, with a growing number of women (40 percent) flying at their company's expense.

Since the average business trip lasts three nights, parents who travel for a living need a reliable person to oversee things at home, such as a spouse, nanny or grandparent. Morgan's paternal grandmother stays with her when her mother is flying. However, Magee is in constant communication with her daughter. "I really rely on my cell phone. I have the bill to prove it," says Magee. "I send her reminder text messages about homework. And when I'm out of the country, I'll send her an e-mail from my laptop. She likes that."

Recently Magee purchased a computer with videoconferencing capabilities so that she and Morgan can have "face-to-face" chats, especially when she travels overseas to Japan, a trip that usually requires a four-day stay. And whenever she is home, and usually while severely jet-lagged, she personally drives Morgan to school in the morning, although she isn't reluctant to get help from church members, family and friends. "Wherever I am, I am in constant communication [with her]," says Magee. "I call or e-mail to see if homework is done. I check in with her grandmother. It's a system of checks and balances."

Frequent Flier ANGST

Veteran business traveling parents share a common fear of missing a key event in their child's life. Both men and women who travel for a living experience more stress and tend to have feelings of guilt about traveling. For their part, children can end up being angry, usually to mask fear about a parent leaving. After Sept. 11, Morgan was fearful about her mother flying and urged her to find another job. If a child is negatively impacted because a parent is traveling frequently, he or she could look for some other way to fill the void of missing that parent. Younger children tend to be more clingy before a parent leaves, or they may regress in their behavior, including throwing tantrums or crawling after they've learned to walk, according to experts.

"For a parent, it all comes down to one word," says family therapist Scott D. Brandt, Ph.D., "contact. It's really what it's all about. Any way that a parent can consistently make contact with the child [while traveling] is good. However, nothing truly replaces the contact of being there in person."

In regard to handling guilt, Dr. Brandt recommends that parents take a hard look when assessing their situation. "They may want to ask themselves, 'Is this job really necessary for survival, or is there really something else that I can do?'"

However, many parents have been commuting for years without any issues. Calvin B. Grigsby, who is CEO of Grigsby & Associates, Inc., which handles sales, trading and public finance, is the father of four children whose ages range from 14 to 30. He has been a business traveler for 30 years, often tucking his children into bed right before jumping onto a red-eye flight. Grigsby and his wife live outside Oakland, Calif., and he travels about 100 days out of the year between the East and West coasts on business.

Even with his hectic schedule, Grigsby says that he never misses a standing appointment with his 6-year-old granddaughter Nia, who calls her grandfather every week on his cell phone to make sure that he escorts her to ballet every Saturday morning. "It's so different," notes Grisby, who has three grandchildren and a teenage daughter who is away at boarding school and with whom he communicates on a regular basis. "Thirty years ago, you had to pull over at the phone booth to call home ... Now you have e-mail and text messages. I have a BlackBerry that I have to transition into. Right now, I just open my laptop, which I am never without."

Like Grisby and Magee, an increasing number of traveling parents (and grandparents) are using today's technology to solve the age-old problem of how to stay in touch with children and family.

Business Traveling Parents How to stay in touch

It's important that parents devise a workable strategy to help their child feel connected to them when they have to travel on business. Here are some devices to help you achieve that goal, but make sure children use technology responsibly.