How do my kids call me from the US if I'm using a US cell phone in Italy?

We text to the kids regular number with 1 ( US country code) before the area code as do our kids in the US to us in Europe.

I think they just dial the same number. I seem to remember posts where people received calls in the middle of the night while in Europe. The callers were unaware that the person they were calling was overseas.

They call you as normal.

If you are using your US phone SERVICE in Italy (AT&T, T-Mobile, etc.) then yes - they call you the same way the would call you as if you are at home. Just dial your phone number.

If you buy an Italian SIM card instead that gives you an Italian phone number, instead of using your home phone service? Different story.

Telephonically speaking, your phone stays in a bubble of US territory. Callers don't need to know which country you are in, and won't know until you moan at them for waking you up in the middle of the night. :-)
And from an Italian phone, callers have to dial the code for the USA (+1 or 001) to reach your phone, even if you are only a few metres away.

Logically it has to be that way, or callers wouldn't be able to call you if they didn't know which country you were in.

Calling from your phone, always include the country code, so there is no ambiguity as to whether you want to call a US number or an Italian number.

Just use the same number. One of the hazards of using your own cell and number is you still get junk calls from the US and they seem to dial in at 3 am where you are staying. I did everything humanly possible to get CVS to stop sending reminders while we were out of the country and nothing worked;I stopped using their pharmacy for this reason; the cost of those calls even though we didn't pick up was high. I did what they told me to do to end the calls, but nothing worked. I did learn after a sleepless night (I don't drift off again if something jars me out of sleep at 3 am) to turn the ringer off on the phone every night (I like to have the phone at bedside and also use it as an alarm).

Note also that even if you have a cheap Europe call plan that does not cover calls to and from the US which are very expensive. We just used phones in the apartments we rented which always have free calling to the US. Europe has much better internet and phone service than the US; they view it as a public good not as an occasion for excess profit.

I put my phone into airplane mode every night before going to sleep, when I travel overseas. I use it as a white noise generator too so I put it right next to my bed.

DP,

As the others have said, if you're using your regular U.S. number, your contacts will simply need to call you as they usually do, and the network will find you regardless of what country you're in. As others have mentioned, that can be a disadvantage if callers don't check the time difference. Calls in the wee hours of the morning are highly annoying, especially if the person calling was specifically told to check the time. If it's an "emergency", that's different of course.

When they say call as they normally do, that means adding a 1 first, then the area code, and the 7 digit number. You carrier may offer a special international plan. AT&T allows me to buy a one-time plan for calling and texting. It is a big money saver. Also suggest using text messages and emails to set up a specific time to call. Then you can jump on a local hotel WiFi and perhaps save some money. Same with texting, emailing, and browsing.

FYI if you both have iphones you can use FaceTime to make a voice call when you are in wifi for free. You could also use regular FaceTime, but most wifi can't handle the video as well as we are used to.

We used WhatsApp to communicate live daily. On the last 20 day trip we took my daughter had had a baby 3 weeks before and it was so hard leaving them both. We video conferenced every day using WhatsApp and I could see and talk to the baby and her, she could ask questions etc. I was also able to show her our apartment, outside the window. One time I did use Data on the streets of Paris just so I could show her the sights and sounds. You can also text with this app.

I don't think you even have to use a 1 -- you are calling in network basically, one US phone to another.

I wish I had had the good sense to use the 'airplane mode' setting at night.

Thank you so much for all the replies! You are all so helpful!