Name changed because I haven't changed any other details. This is long.
I'd welcome some outsider thoughts on this situation. Both my sisters have lived abroad for 5+ years and I have, until recently, stayed local to my parents so I've been the one helping with practical things and in particular, technology. My mum is hard wok when trying to help with technology for several reasons. She never knows her passwords and has a limited amount of knowledge. She would blame her slow running laptop on something my dad did rather than the many Internet games she's played and all the viruses that came with them. The stress of sorting it all out (5 min job takes over an hour) means that I avoid doing it where possible but this just means she saves them all up and so the whole situation is unnecessarily stressful. Especially as I'm now facing up to my own worsening tech skills!
Now that I've moved away it's even harder to help my mum remotely. I've asked my sisters if we could create a family WhatsApp that my mum can put in her questions and we can provide help when we are able. This help would be Google links to 'how to' pages. At the moment she doesn't have the digital skills to Google effeciently and help herself but my hope was that she'd learn more confidence by following good instructions rather than wait for me to do it for her. There's not much else my sisters can do with being far away because I'm finding the same.
One sister said she hasn't got the energy to do it and the other agreed. There's been a lot of talk about putting boundaries in place and I don't have to help her and neither should they. They suggested buying her a book or course instead which I don't think will work for the same reasons they dont think my Google idea will work but thats the help they're offering so I chased that idea up today.
I am now terrified for the future if this is what happens when I ask for specific help on a tech issue. My parents both have worsening health problems and my sisters seem to have no problem putting boundaries in place and passing the responsibility to me whilst at the same time loudly protesting when I want to share that responsibility back.
There's nothing obvious in our family that would explain why they're happy to resolve themselves of helping out but there's no doubt there's obviously a lot of issues here. Not least the fact I find it very difficult to ask for help and asking them for this was a big step for me. I'm now considering whether I should just accept that this won't be forthcoming or keep trying?