Complete refusal to use technology

My mum is late eighties and manages to use IT effectively.
Where the difficulties come is when there are long time gaps between doing things, so it's like starting from scratch every time there's something new to learn.
Start with a mobile - sit next to her and make her practice sending texts and making calls, in front of you. Get family to text/WhatsApp her at least daily so that she gets used to receiving and answering. Write down the instructions, if necessary with screenshots, so that she has something to refer to when you're not there.
Then show her the settings and get her to try out different functions.
Show her how to google. Get her to do it in front of you. Show her the nice stuff she can do- see photos of grandchildren, look up U3A classes etc.

Mixed feelings about all this. I’m really happy with my iPad , have all my accounts on line but still use a cheque to pay milkman and gardener,and cash for kids who come to wash the car and window cleaner. Amazon at my door whenever I can’t be bothered to go out,Waitrose and Ocado shop alternately for boring stuff. WhatsApp daily to family abroad. I’m a hair’s breadth off 80. I did notice Sweden needed to use cash one day last week. A dear friend resigned from her job as a medical receptionist because it became too technical. She refused the internet. I occasionally wondered if it was a way in which she could put two fingers up at the world. She had a child born disabled who eventually died and her husband could not cope leaving her with two other children. She was an excellent driver and all round highly educated and competent woman in other respects. Definitely suggest getting young person not related to the mothers to show how to go online.

I don't think it's always as simple as saying they won't try. My dm doesn't understand tech at all. She's tried but it's like a foreign language to her. She's mid 80s and until recently had an old 2g Nokia 4210. When we had to buy her a new phone some years ago she tried so hard, but her fear of the technology meant she just couldn't do it. She was so upset, saying she must be stupid. After we finally got her a 4g version she burst in to tears of relief. My 90 year old dad does have a smart phone and will look some stuff up. Even so, he needs help to clean up the phone and apps periodically. Neither of them trust themselves to do internet banking or pay for stuff online. They've heard so many stories of scams and people losing their life savings they daren't risk it.

They are very independent in most ways, which it seems many people's parents aren't. They ask for very little help and hate to rely on anyone for anything, but they never came across anything with computers in their work. They had very traditional interests where there was no need for email contacts etc, and all family were local, so there was no incentive to access social media. It isn't unreasonable if they struggle given their lifestyle over the years, and I doubt they had a crystal ball 20 years ago that led them to believe it would be important to get tech savvy in order to function in today's world.
In any case, they were rather busy supporting aged parents who didn't understand cashpoints, couldn't remember how to use a card to collect their pension from the post office, and had complex health issues. They had no energy or mental capacity for anything else.

My parents are the same

Dad bought an iPad and my DS and DD have spent time teaching him- he can’t be bothered and leaves me to manage everything.

His is a form of control, for other people they may be nervous about something new.

Tbh I believe in evolve or die 🤷‍♀️ (sorry to sound harsh- issues are with my parents).

They are now reliant on others to manage bills, bank, buy stuff 😳

Going to go a bit against the grain here, although slightly different as DM is 92 and MIL is 90. My mother doesn't have a computer/use mobile phone etc. When she gets scam calls it is easy for her to tell them they're lying (although they sometimes refuse to believe she doesn't have the internet and argue!!); as a result we do not have to worry about her . My MIL has computer/phone/tablet and believes she knows what she is doing; 100 times worse! She orders crap from China that we can't return, get scammed into buying crypto, the other week fell for the "mum my phone's not working, send £2000 pounds now!!" and did, so bank had to refund and community police visited to have a chat. If you think she'd be incompetent with it, then it is easier to do things for her. We have taken on more and more, but she still finds new things to mess up. 🙈

There are plenty of people on here who will say they wouldn't. It's like some sort of weird flex.

There's a whole generation of middle aged people right now rejecting any idea of AI who will be similarly left behind in 20-30 years.

Indeed - it has often crossed my mind that anxiety is a big problem there. But it's her normal so it's hard to convince her that it's not 'normal'.

She's also very proud of never needing to take medication for anything for her entire life, and is convinced that medication she does take (only the odd paracetamol for ninety years) sends her straight to sleep. She's been prescribed a medication for a condition that developed recently, but (1) won't accept she has this condition, and (2) managed to negotiate a lower dosage with her GP, because of denial and also because she believes this medication works differently for her than for anyone else taking it. We were not happy that the GP was OK with the lowered dosage in the face of DM's strenuous campaign, but it was her professional decision. I can't see her ever accepting that she'd find MH meds a plus.

MIL was like this. Used it as a form of control IMO.

Oh my. We must have the same mum. That television thing happened only last week.

My DM, 79:

• Non smartphone, always off
• Refuses to pay bills by direct debit, bar energy bills when I spent about 2 years persuading
• I order food online, only since became less able to do all on the bus herself
• Can Google, do crosswords on tablet, and once in extremis, suddenly able to use video calling despite previous refusal
• Mostly I nod and smile when she complains about her local bank closing and not having a card to withdraw money from her savings account

Absolutely the sane position. My mum pokes at the iPhone with her nail, claim it doesn’t work and once threw it on the ground. She’s 80. I have had to accept she’s beyond learning anything new now.

DM would benefit from medication, but ‘there’s nothing wrong with me’ it’s the fault of everyone and everything else so she won’t be taking it.

She’s suspicious of medication. Suspicious of all of us- she won’t release control of anything. We are all unreliable and prone to erratic behaviour like not always agreeing with her about everything.

Occasionally she makes life really hard by ‘trying not to impose’ and actually we’d all have been far happier if she’d just let us do it in the first place.

And as for those of you trying the ‘just be glad you still have a mother…!’ line- just be glad your experience with your mother hasn't been like those of us who have had a long hard journey with an obstreperous curmudgeon who appears to delight in thwarting every effort made to help.

My mum was like this (died a couple of years ago aged 82). Refused to use a mobile phone. We got her one about 20 years ago and it just sat in a drawer. Yet she had no problem driving a car or using SKY TV. I think she was just scared of having to learn something new. It made me sad because my dad died very young in the 80s of cancer and never saw the Internet, which he would have loved.

I have no phone signal where I live so regularly offer visitors use of the WiFi. I've been surprised by the number of people who don't know how to connect their phone to WiFi and ask me to do it for them.

My mil at 87 had one of her sons move abroad he bought her an iPad so they can FaceTime , Whapsapp or Skype . She got her granddaughter to show her how,and at 90 still does it .
Yours hasn't because she does not want to . Gradually withdraw be able / willing to do it , show her how , and even a simple written how to and leave her to it .

I think you might be on the right track there. The tech issue with my DM is part of a pattern whose common thread is avoidance of machines and electricity in general. All her life she's been a knit yer own lentils kind of semi hippie, doing everything by hand even when it meant hours and hours of work. She made all of our childhood clothes, cooked meals from scratch every day..

She didn't even learn to drive until her late 60s (as a widow), and only then after being involved in an accident in a friend's car.

She basically won't listen to anyone telling her what skills would be to her advantage to learn. After the traffic accident she finally took lessons, and a few years later when she passed her test on the fifth attempt she called me brimming with excitement to tell me how easy it had been to drive to the supermarket that morning and get everything she needed - which Dsis and I had been telling her for ten years.

When people say it’s a honour to look after an older person - well they clearly don’t have a full time job, children or any interests outside their parent. No holidays, just running around and being the single point of contact for almost everyone who comes in contact with the older person. And the worst thing about all of it is that you really don’t know when it going to end. With my parents I found the hospitals just threw the kitchen sink at them to patch them up and literally be wheeled out back to the care home. No thought of quality of life.

My late Mother begged to die or to have someone give her a pill which would make her years younger. Her last 4 years on this earth were not great. She told me many times she just wanted to go to sleep one night and quietly slip away.

Medical advances and the fear of the medical profession to not be accused of ageism meant she didn’t get her wish.

I take the view that though I Ioved my dad and adore my mum, there is really not very much joy in extreme old age or in caring for someone at that stage, and it is ok to feel only relief and happiness once that stage ends. I separate that from grief - I will grieve the loss of my dear mum who was wonderful to me very hard- but the end of this bit, 86-90+ I’m afraid will be a happy day, because it bears no resemblance at all to what she regarded as a good quality of life. And to deny that it’s hard is silly, it should inform your own planning.

Of course not. Some of these types of responses are pie in the sky

Lots of people have difficulties with executive functioning that over the years wouldnt have been evident, but something new comes along which challenges that, and they cant do it and now it comes to the fore

My mum has never been able to operate an ATM, she isnt compentent in lots of areas now due to significant MH issues but even before that she couldnt do it. She tried to tune in a radio once which was actually a cassette player, didnt realise what she was doing

A bit like when grandad on Only Fools was trying to get Dallas on the microwave

Banks are closing everywhere because if the only people using them are the elderly or stubborn to pay in cheques or to enquire how much they have in their accounts they will shut (told to me by a bank manager friend).

No doubt about this at all. When the Bank of Scotland announced that my Mum's branch was closing they put online an analysis of the customers who'd visited the branch over the previous year, broken down by age. Not many people of working age visited in person. The numbers were pushed up by people like my Dad who refused to use the ATM and drew cash out by cheque. Even he used online banking to check the balance, though.

Yes, I would. In the same way I wouldn’t do things for anyone that they could do themselves. You can’t do everything for another person because they refuse to do it.

My mum (81) just set up Apple Pay on her phone so she could use it on her croquet holiday to corfu.

Hitting the iPad like it was a typewriter😂 my 3 yr old niece worked out for herself how to open what she wanted on an iPad. This does sound deliberate. Have you got a very young child in the family who can say ‘no granny not like that you do it like this’. She would then be too embarrassed to do it wrong when a young child can do it correctly

MIL loves her tech but struggles with the level of touch needed to make things happen - it seems to be a bit of an age thing. Solution is a 10 pack of cheap stylus thingies from ebay in her christmas stocking every year.

Although your DM sounds just plain wilful.