Am I being unreasonable in this teaching situation?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Ah, but your mother is capable of using Excel, email and Word by herself!

Mine can’t even remember that clicking on the big arrow in the middle of a Whatsapp “picture” will play it. And her most-recent bout of “the computer won’t work at all!!!” was a case of “the batteries in the cordless keyboard need replacing” (she likes that keyboard precisely because it’s cordless). She’d asked my brother Jay to help, but as usual she’d done it just as he was leaving her home, 3yo in trail; woman has the worst timing since that guy who moved to Pompeii on the day before the eruption.

22

checks year The last time I got to train in how to use SAP people who had never previously used email, either for work or at home, was 2017. The last time I had end-users who had never previously used a computer either at work or at home was 2014. One of the first things I do when I get to a new factory, if I have access to the end-users from the start (in small factories that’s often the case) is figure out who the local “pirates” are: that guy who carries two phones because he makes gaming apps, that other one who I hear offering to come to someone else’s house to see what’s wrong with the tablet they bought “because the kid needs it for school”… are my best friends and then some.

23

I think it’s safe to say, whether it’s because she won’t or because she can’t, your mother doesn’t learn this stuff. And the fact that she truly doesn’t, makes the question of “won’t vs. can’t” an academic exercise only.

I sometimes wonder if the best computer-use lesson a teacher can give is “Here. You figure out how to use it. If you ruin it that’s OK, I can easily fix it again” - and then the teacher leaves the room and takes a trip to Alaska.

24

Late 60’s is not that old. What did your mother do in life between 20 and 60? Computers have been fairly ubiquitous since she was 40.

25

I’ve been there. My parents are older than yours (dad is about to turn 85, mom is 78), and they first got a computer about 15 years ago. They used it primarily for email, and for a few computer games (mostly card games), and my mom would look up recipes. But, every time I’d come up to visit, I’d be asked to spend an hour or two troubleshooting, and figuring out why something wasn’t working properly. (It undoubtedly didn’t help that my niece often used the computer, as well, and it’d get clogged with malware and such.)

But, I think that the biggest thing was that they didn’t use it often enough to really get conversant with it – I think that the way computers work does require regular use in order to gain a level of mastery with the systems, and to be able to remember how to do things with them. For most of us who use computers as part of our daily lives, all of these things just come naturally to us now.

A few years ago, they decided that they were just not getting enough usage out of the computer, and they just stopped using it. FWIW, I got them an Amazon Fire Stick for their TV a couple of years ago, and they’ve been able to learn how to use that – they watch Netflix, Amazon Prime shows, and the PBS app, regularly with it. But, again, it’s something that they use on a regular basis now – at least once a week, and probably more often than that.

26

I agree with this. People in their 60s are still working technical jobs and doing them well, still keeping up with scientific fields (and not as emeritus punters, either), and generally still making use of their cognitive faculties.

Maybe she’s in the early stages of dementia. Maybe she’s lonely and trying to make her child talk to her more often than they otherwise would. Maybe she’s a control freak who’s found a handy lever to make her property jump at her beck and call. I don’t know her, so I can’t be sure. But I can be sure that it isn’t just age.

27

Yes, but that doesn’t mean she would have actually had to use it in that time period. It sounds like she never wanted to until her 60s, so it’s new to her now.

I’d also add that losing things you don’t use very often is easy. If you want it not to be lost, tape it to the computer itself. Make it as easy as possible for her to do–have her always signed in on Facebook and email provider. Have buttons she can press to get there automatically.

I would have thought my mom couldn’t learn, and there’s no way she wouldn’t lose an unattached paper. But she figured out normal Facebook as long as she has a Facebook button to press. And she can check her email, even if she’s lousy about actually sending one–though this is mostly because she never has to.

If she did, I’d have a button for that, too.

28

Yeah, but computers have been fairly ubiquitous for several years longer than the internet. Anyway, my dad’s 68, so close in age to the OP’s mom. He’s been using e-mail since 1995, same as me and lil bro.

29

Have you tried having her use an iPad? Or other large smart phone? I know many friends whose parents’ computer issues were solved by going to: 1. An Apple and/or 2. a tablet.

If your mom isn’t computer friendly or savvy currently, she isn’t going to be typing up a storm anyway so a tablet will allow her to check her social media, her email, and get on the internet. My grandparents-in-law (90+) are incredibly tech savvy and owned the first digital camera that I saw and have driven Prius and now Tesla for years. They each have their own iPad (and iPhone) to keep up with their (great)grandchildren primarily. But they need two because they have them configured with icons where they want them, etc.

30

Do you have her using a webmail email account like Gmail, or are you setting something up through a mail client that she access through Outlook or Mail or something?

31

Gmail.

32

My ex has Alzheimer disease yet she seems to do great with her facebook and cell phone for the most part. Good enough to pay the same bill 5 times in one day.

33

Huh. I was all set to tell you that setting up a desktop solution just seems to be a step too far for a lot of people, and that gmail is just an easy solution for technophobes. But I got nothin’!

34

Oh, so * that’s* what those words mean!

Thanks, I’m gonna go print that out and tape it on my monitor next to all my passwords.

35

No offense, I hope, but maybe part of your frustration is misplaced.

What difference does it make if she knows which is the monitor and which the computer? Knowing that is basic, I agree, but it does not address the issue (whatever it is) with accessing email and Facebook. I don’t know Apples, but can’t you set up an icon or a shortcut to access Gmail and Facebook?

So she can just
[ul][li]Turn on the computer - “press that button there and wait for it to warm up”[/li][li]Enter the password - “type it in off this Post-it note here - remember, it’s your initials and your birthday’.[/li][li]Click here to get into your email.[/li][li]Click here to Reply, click here to write a new email, click there to delete what you don’t need.” [/li][li]Click here to close. [/ul]Set up some spam filters for her, let her know about the Nigerians, and make sure she has some decent anti-virus software. [/li]
When teaching beginners, the hard part is not overwhelming them with too much background information that doesn’t matter.

Basically, you need to take the attitude to your mother that my daughter does to me about my phone. “Just click on the three dots, daddy.” And resist, as does my daughter, the urge to sigh and take the phone away from me and do it herself. If she does that, I will never learn.

Regards,
Shodan

36

I hear ya, Michael!

My father-in-law likes to use JunoMail in plain text mode only. He swears someone told him he can’t get viruses via text-only e-mail. He signed up for FaceBook because someone told him he could use it to advertise his books to increase sales – but he has no idea how to craft a page, much less an advertising campaign. He actually has two computers, a laptop and a tower, and he never connects the tower to the Internet because someone told him that would let spammers find him. To distinguish that one from the Internet Laptop, he refers to it as the Desktop. This makes it really difficult to ascertain “What do you see there on the desktop” when I’m trying to help him via phone or e-mail.

But he’s doing better than my mother ever did; she couldn’t get used to ATM machines. Then again, I’m glad she never discovered e-Bay…

And, for that matter, he’s over 90 years old so the fact that he uses a computer at all (mostly writing sermons in Microsoft Word and playing Solitaire even though he doesn’t understand the rules) is pretty impressive. But age really has nothing to do with it.

I also try to provide a bit of technical help to the lady who cuts my hair. She relocated her business and got a cheap security camera system for the new place so I offered to get it connected to the Internet so it could store back-ups of the daily recordings. I refurbed an old computer to facilitate that and she said, “Cool! I want to send ads and coupons to my clients’ by e-mail!”

Yeah, but doing that means learning some sort of word-processing program and learning how to work with e-mail and contact lists and – well, basically she doesn’t have the technical acumen to start learning all that. She’s a licensed beautician and hairdresser and that’s her profession and she has no interest in learning outside of that field. [And I’m not inclined to do it all for her, either.]

So, like your mother, I can encourage my barber and my father-in-law to do as much as possible and, really, at some point I have to just step back and accept that they are just not going to be skillful with this technology. That’s sometimes hard to accept but I also remind myself that I can’t draw a straight line with a CAD program and that’s probably just as frustrating to my wife and sister and many other people who are, if not really good artists, at least able to sketch well enough to be vaguely understood.

I second the suggestion of a course. If the person teaching her isn’t going to come to her house to help, she might force herself to learn. Plus, if she has to pay for the course, she might have more investment in comprehending the material.

You might check out the course(s) for her in advance, though. The reason I’ve ended up as family tech-support is because my father-in-law was taking a course long ago and the instructor was teaching the seniors to do all sorts of weird stuff. One weekend, my father-in-law called me for help because he had followed the instructor’s example and made his computer into an FTP server. Why? He barely uses e-mail! Well, that’s what the instructor showed us this weekend. Weeks later, I got a call because the course instructor taught, “When you need more storage and decide to install another hard drive, here’s how to format it so it will accept your data.” except my father-in-law didn’t quite hear the ‘when adding storage’ clause so he just went home and reformatted his hard drive. :smack:

So his wife forbade him to continue attending those classes and I started getting calls for help when things “…just disappeared! I didn’t do anything. It’s just gone!” :dubious:

–G!

37

After she passes, you’ll find the desk drawer where she stashed all the notes and instructions so you’d keep coming by to see her.

38

That happened with my grandparents. Grandma was intimidated and just gave up, a decision her husband heartily endorsed. She never drove her entire life.

39

I gather you’ve never helped someone who complained the computer wasn’t switching on when what was unhooked from the computer (and yes, not switching on) was the monitor. When step one in your own list doesn’t work and which exact part doesn’t work is something which needs to be guessed from the beeps, boops and brrms heard over the phone, the levels of frustration shot up a lot quicker than when you get someone who can actually describe the bloody problem.

40

Well, I’ve done tech support, and “is it plugged in” is a question you learn to ask. If they say “I don’t know” you then go on to ask “is the box plugged into an outlet/is the light on the box lit up/is the box plugged into the screen”.

Of course, this wasn’t my mother, so I had no emotional investment in the process, so maybe I could be a little more detached.

Regards,
Shodan