How Do You Long Distance Parent In A Pandemic?

I moved to Boise at the end of 2019 to come to work on the radio in the Treasure Valley, but because I have teenagers, the rest of my family couldn’t move here until the end of the school year.  Enter the COVID-19 Pandemic.  Now, my plan to visit them every other weekend has gone out the window and now the only way that I can interact with them is via the phone or FaceTime.  Honestly, I sometimes feel a little depressed that I can’t have the same simple interactions that we’re used to having as a family.

I used to have a weekly tradition of losing to my son in NBA 2K20 on the PlayStation, which has been able to continue thanks to the online gaming but it’s harder to interact with my daughters, who used to watch movies and play board games with me and of course, make me be their Uber driver.

I’ve tried a few things to keep some of these things going.  We tried to play Monopoly on FaceTime, but that didn’t go very well at all.  Watching the same movie at the same time has also been a disaster.  Someone had suggested Jackbox Games, but I’m not sure that works in different places.  Trivia Crack is fun but it’s not live and that’s what we’re looking for.  If you have any suggestions on long distance parenting with teens, please comment below.