While we welcome new technology and embrace it with open arms, there are some of our most common day objects that our elderly relatives just can’t seem to get their heads around. Even the most corpus mentus amongst them seem to have problems using these items.
Have you ever tired to teach an older person how to use a mobile phone? Great fun isn’t it! They can grasp the answering business but texts and voicemails? Forget it! Another part that’s lost on them is that it’s called a ‘mobile’ phone for a reason, but do they ever take them out with them? Do they heck, and its pointless leaving a message as they don’t know how to retrieve them.
Another item they seem to have issues with is an electric toothbrush. One elderly relative, who shall remain nameless, said she hated the vibration in her mouth. As she holds her teeth in her hand to clean them, this was lost on me! So I took it back and left her happily squirting her denture toothpaste onto her old manual brush.
Computers and the internet are another no go area. Trying to teach a septuagenarian how to connect to the internet is as pointless as giving mouthwash to a camel. They are never going to grasp it, and when they tell you that their emails are ‘getting lost in the post’, you know its time to give it up as a bad job.
Modern Hi-fi’s, TV digi boxes and DVD players are also things not to put in their Christmas stocking. If you can find an old video recorder with a remote attached to a wire and a Hi-fi which plays vinyl records, they’ll be in their element. Good look finding them, and let me know if you do!
