Over the last 6 weeks, I have had my mother-in-law from Ireland staying with us. I live in Sydney and for the last 2 years, Australia has been cut off from international travel. For the past 25 years, we have been able to travel to Europe regularly for work, so we got into the habit of doing long haul flights at least six times a year and catching up in person.
Since the pandemic began, we have had to depend on the internet, phones and WhatsApp to keep communications open, particularly as my father-in-law passed away and we had to help her with estate issues as well as just keeping in touch. One of the big roadblocks to being able to help her was her tech.
When she arrived, we all looked at the dinosaur of a phone she was carrying around ( a very old Samsung) and decided she should switch to an iPhone as we are all Apple users and (we thought) it would be easier to explain to her how to do things if we were on the same platform. We found an old iPhone 8 that was lying around in a drawer and an old iPad and off we went.
Easier said than done. The first roadblock-she was happy with her old phone, and couldn't see why she should change. Over the next week or so, we painstakingly transferred all her data, downloaded her apps (her golf booking system was a priority) and tried to teach her step by step how work the phone.
The iPad was more successful. She fully embraced Netflix and enjoys watching episodes of Outlander and her Turkish soap (so many seasons- who knew?) at full volume. We then had to find her some headphones. So she was motivated.
She headed back to Ireland. Second roadblock- how do you switch on mobile data? We had switched it off so she didn't rack up huge roaming charges. I thought we tried to explain how to switch it back on but clearly, she wasn't listening. She didn't think she needed to know how to do it..plus she had all her willing grandkids around that did this boring task for her.
However, she worked out how to download her Netflix shows by herself for her 26 hour trip back home. Why? Motivation.