What is one thing your parents will never learn?

[TwoManyKids]

Light hearted!
My mum refuses to learn the difference between the WiFi and mobile data. She runs her data down at home (messing around with settings and accidently turning off wifi) and obsessively hounds waiters/baristas for WiFi codes when we are out! I keep telling her she is paying for data and she can use it!
What is something your parents can't get their heads around?
Also She'll also hopefully never learn it was me and now my sibling who dinged the car twenty years ago!

That just because you live abroad.. doesn't mean you have to shout down the phone to me as if i can't hear you..my dad does this.

Every....single....time

Writing your pin number on the back of your bank card is a bad idea.

My lovely Mum, when Wi-Fi started being offered free, in places like cafe's.

"Oh look, they are giving people free weefee, I don't know what that is, but we should get some"

Just one thing?

That a mobile phone is mobile.

That it's ok for someone else to tell a story without butting in with "ooh that's just like Joyce down the road" or similar. I try not to pause for breath because she leaps right in when she senses that weakness!

That I don’t have a lunch hour.

hellswelshy - he slept underneath the duvet but inside the cover, like a sleeping bag. He thought sleeping inside the cover stopped the duvet falling off in the night so he became in effect a human anchor. When you think about it there is some logic there.

@BeachBlondey I'm 30s and still don't understand Twitter, I only have an account now to follow the school for updates on school trips etc, it already seems pretty dated to me like Facebook now (although I do still use Facebook a lot, not cool I know...)

OMG feeling your pain. This was my dad all over. I think because I worked from home/was self employed he always had it in his head that I was a housewife who just did the odd hour here and there for pocket money, despite many attempts to make him understand I was running a business. He's no longer with us and I miss him terribly, but I don't miss the stress he used to cause by constantly breaking into my work day with things that could easily have waited.

That it's rare for computers to just stop logging you into things for no reason - you've probably done something wrong too many times and has now locked you out.

How hard we work - they cannot comprehend a world where you don't start at nine and finish at five on the dot with an hour off for lunch

God-ageism lives and breathes on Mumsnet, doesn't it?

No matter how many times she diets, she'll never be satisfied with herself. Makes me sad.

I thought you meant he clambered in to change the cover, not sleep in it 😂

It's possible to love your parents very much and still be driven round the bend by some of the things they do or don't do. And I'm very good at calling out ageism. I don't see any here in what was started as a light hearted thread.

But people are saying what their own parents do, not what they think all older people do.

The WFH one drives me mad. My parents are all ‘Oh ho ho, “working” from home, eh? Got your feet up?’ etc etc every time I mention it.

Also a lot of things I mention I do with my kids they take as an insult about their own parenting. So I might say I’m taking DD ice skating, and they’ll say ‘oh well, I’m sorry we never took you ice skating, however did you manage?’ in a sarcastic tone.

And breeeeeathe…..

@swedex

Hard work isn't it.

If I try and tell her how I feel I it just ends in another therapy session,,, for her

DM cannot copy and paste. She is very competent with technology in general (she can do everything she needs/wants to do perfectly well) but she can't copy and paste. I've shown her all the ways I know to do it over the years, but it doesn't seem to sink in. I've just come to accept that if she wants to send me a link to something, I either have to explain how to do it each time, get her to read out the web address or just search for it myself. And don't get me started on copying/pasting text...

On the flipside, she's taught me to knit about six times but as soon as I stop doing it, I lose the ability entirely. It's a source of great disappointment to DM, I can see it in her eyes. She taught my 9yo last year, and she seems to have retained the skill, so I think I'm off the hook for now. (DD can also copy and paste.)

I'm so glad it's not just me!

I have tried and tried to engage with it - it just doesn't make any sense. I feel like I'm in a foreign world, where everyone speaks the language except me.

Oh god, same.

I told my dad once, at about age 11, that I didn't like ice in my drink.

30 years on, anytime we are out "two cokes please....one with no ice, please!"

I've now given up saying "actually, I'm ok with ice now".

I order wine from a local wine merchants. They have a website to order through and recently updated it to 2010 standards (not a typo) from its 1998 level. They improved the payment system and sent out an email explaining how it was encrypted etc. They also explained that you are welcome to phone up and give your card details over the phone but that is not encrypted and you are relying on them remembering to throw away the piece of paper with all your details on.

PIL won't shop online at all. It's DS' birthday next week, I have an Amazon list for him. They will browse the list quite happily, and then ask me or DH to order their choice. On DN's birthdays they get SIL/BIL to do the same.

During lockdown we were worried about how they were going to eat, and they did eventually concede to trying a Tesco delivery, but at one point I thought we were going to have to do it for them every week! Which we would've done, of course. They even admitted it was much easier than going shopping but AFAIK they've never done it since.

That when she cooks me something, then asks if I enjoyed it and I say yes, lovely, I’m just being polite. I don’t want it every single visit. I don’t actually like salmon.

Also, I am a properly qualified medical doctor. I do know quite a lot, so when she asks me for my opinion and doesn’t like what she hears, there’s no need to go and see her GP ( for a “proper opinion) as she’ll just get the same answer.

That’s more funnier than you could imagine. After my DF died I found a birth registration with my DF listed as the father to a baby girl with his ex wife. My parents always said they never had any children, so I may well have a sister I never knew about 😂

For my dad, it's anything to do with tech, he will never get it and I guess at 85, he doesn't need to. Mind you, he's designed some amazing houses, put in the odd central heating system or two and was a competitive sailor. No chance I could do that, well apart from the sailing, I can do that.

My mum at 80 is brilliant with tech, she gets it really quickly. She picks many things up very quickly. She couldn't do what my dad does though.