OK- let me preface this by saying This Does Not Apply to All Parents. This observation is based on many conversations with my pals in their 20s/30s/40s. That said, here goes…
Your parent can’t connect to the internet. They call you for help.
Dad is having trouble getting the pics off his digital camera. He calls you for help.
Mom cannot get the voicemails off her new cell phone. She calls you (from a land-line) for help.
One friend told me he spent 30 minutes teaching his mom how to “double-click.”
Our parents gave us life, and now we give them tech help.
Is this you? Do you have a funny story about helping your parent out? Or maybe you’re a parent who needed help starting out, but now you’re teaching your kid about the newest aggregator on the block.
Post it below and we’ll put it on the show. The best story gets a Spark reusable grocery bag.
(Mom, if you’re reading this, I promise this is not about you–even though I know you’re going to call me and ask about it. I am proud that you have a web-cam, have a skype account and that you IM.)
this exactly describes me and the i have helped my mother become familiar with her nokia pay as you go fido phone. To her siblings i am sure she is from the future. and a few weeks ago i helped my father set up his microsoft outlook settings and then explain to him that to use a computer is not as easy as a vcr, dvd player or a cd player. when i showed up there he was watching youtube(proabably thinking that that was that was pinnacle of computer viewing) then i showed ssupload.com where he(and anybody) can watch free movies. he uinsisted on clicking banner ads and then when the movie started to play in a pop up window he asked me ‘hey, why is this advertising is korean?’ i replied simply and respectfully “who cares, its better than paying $9!”
mind you i do not mind doing all this it is a way to bond with them on a level that is 2nd nature to me and i am kind of the ambassador of technology to them.
lets face it, chances are: i am going to do exactly the same thing with/to my children!
I am a technophile who had jsut recently come out of the closet – the technophile closet, that is. I have developed a fascination with computer and related technology out of necessity, rather than… whatever reason others turn into technophiles for. Anyway, so the indirect consequence of which is that I have become my parents’ very own IT department. I visit my parents every weekend for dinner, and after that, I would sit in front of their computer, and perform tasks such as updating, defrag, backing up files, and fix whatever little glitches within my ability.
Next year, between graduation and starting a new job, a big plan of mine is teaching my parents the things I now do for them. This would require sitting them down, and go through everything step-by-step. I can already see how the reversal of roles will look like, and I really don’t know how to feel about it. But hey, I love my parents, and there is nothing I would not do for them, including holding them by the hands, and say, “Okay mom, now, right-click on that icon and select ‘preferences’”.
I don’t want to (publicly) go into the sordid details of my parents’ technology squabbles. Instead, I’ll mention a product that I’ve never used but sounds cool: Fog Creek Copilot (https://www.copilot.com/) which was designed for exactly this kind of one-to-one remote control. Fog Creek is owned by the famous software/management blogger Joel Spolsky (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/)
I eventually managed to teach my dad to use the telephone, though he never quite grasped the concept of saying “goodbye” at the end of a call: he’d just stop talking and put the phone down.
Now I live about 4,000 miles away from my parents and would like to send them a videophone so that they could see their granddaughter. The problem is that a decent videophone requires broadband Internet, which means having a computer around to configure the line (and perhaps prod it back into life periodically). I’m not about to try teaching them what a computer is and how to use it.
Before to venture my life on my own, which is here in Halifax (w00t!) Dad needed help setting up his computer. I was driving around in my newly bought Plymouth Acclaim, when I arrived home to find my dad hovering around the computer. He asked for my help. He said the tower wouldn’t turn on. I asked him if he plugged in the power supply cabl;e and if he plugged it in the outlet. He confirmed he did already. After multiple attempts, nothing was happening. So I began to think about what was wrong. First thing that came to mind was the power supply itself. I figured maybe he got chipped out of a computer deal. So, I brought out another power supply, that I was saving for my computer and took apart his and tested it out. Still nothing. After spending almost an hour frankensteining his computer, my step sister arrived home, and decided to turn on the TV, and to her dismise, nothing happened. She asked why their was no power. My dad replied ‘I took out the breaker.’ I looked at him questionably. I asked him why, and he said the computer has it’s own power supply so he wouldn’t need to fuse in the breaker for where the living room was. I also noticed a tangle of multiple cords leading in behind the computer desk, as SVEERAL power bars where connected and everything else in the room was connected. I guess he assume that the computer produced it’s own power supply, but hey. He’s 68 so I’ll give him credit for the whole idea.
I should mention that there was a documentary film made about the development of Copilot: http://www.projectaardvark.com/movie/
A few months ago, I showed my father solitaire as an way to teach my father how to double-click and drag with the mouse. Since then, he’s been addicted to solitaire.
I have been helping my parents with their computers over the last few months. The tip on https://www.copilot.com/ was a great one!! What a way to bridge a 5000 mile gap! It worked very well and helped me to sort out several glitches that my Mom had got herself into with her new system. I think this is a great product and the free weekend pass makes it even better.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve setup an e-mail account for my mom, shown her how to send and read e-mails, only to have her ask me to show her a month later how to get an e-mail account. I don’t think she realizes that the same account is suppose to be used and setting a new one up everytime you want to check your mail is not the norm.
I always smile when I think back to my Dad’s first digital camaera and his delight at emailing some attached pictures. Unfortunately the attached pictures were all between 1 and 2 MBs in size! I think the email was almost 10 MBs! And I remember my blackberry quickly becoming chokingly full. I called my Dad and explained the importance of saving pictures as jpegs, small files that are more easily received by email clients of every kind. After a few tries, he was all set!
Now it’s the joy of Skype. When he and my Mom call from Florida (snowbird land) with Skype, I believe it’s nothing short of the effort used to launch a space shuttle. “Carolyn, are you there? Can you here us ok?” Oh dear…not sure how to handle this one…
This might be something I just let him have fun with…
Well yes. This definitely describes me and my family. The phone calls usually go something like this: “Hello. How are you. Have you got a minute?” Note the part where “how are you” isn’t actually a question and “have you got a minute” is only pretending to be a question. In fact “Have you got a minute” is almost secret family code for, “I’ve been trying for hours to make this work and I might cry soon if you don’t help me. Please.”
It really is my own fault though. I’ve got my dad using Linux and my mum runs her own mailing list and updates her own Web site. Even though we’re very high tech in some areas, we are definitely a family that is selective about the technologies we choose to learn. All of our VCRs still blink 12:00.
Dear Folks:
Great program today!
Helping parents and other newbies with computers has been a long-standing task. I have also appreciated the help of those who keep answering my list of questions.
F.Y.I., Elizabeth:
Two locally published books by Louise Latremouille have been helpful to some of my friends:
- “My Parents’ First Computer and Internet Guide” (2nd edition), 2005;
and
- “My Parents’ Second Computer and Internet Guide – Beyond the Basics, Made Easy,” 2007.
They are available nationally, and on-line.
They are published by KLMK Enterprises, at
http://www.myparentsfirst.com
Sales help raise funds for cancer research.
– You may wish to publish these titles, as ‘parents’ probably learn better from books than from on-line guides.
Regards.
My parents are beyond help. They are analog in a digital world. They upgrade their car every 4 years but somehow believe their television or computer should last 20. 30 minutes to teach “double-click” is but a brief blip when just trying to explain the heady concepts of “Mouse”, “Click” and “Right-click”. The dinosaurs became oil faster than my parents could learn to use their computer, camera or any other fancy doo-dad they lived without for 50 years.