How do you engage your parent by using the internet?

What a fantastic topic, Franka!  I'm anxious to hear others' experiences as well!

My mom has a computer, though she's had one for years and is 65, so she's semi-internet savvy.  My mother-in-law, has cognitive impairment and has a list of steps to take to check email sitting next to her computer.  Maybe something like that could work for your mom? 

One thing that we've noticed with both moms is that they seem afraid of the computer.  I get that because when I was less computer literate, I had this fear that I would accidently press some wrong sequence of keys and the whole thing would explode or I'd email out a virus to the president.  Maybe your mom needs guidance and reassurance.  Make it as easy for her as possible.

One other thing I did was have my blog entries emailed directly to both moms upon publishing.  Our blog is password protected, so it keeps them from having to find the site, logon and navigate. 

Hope that helps!

Hi Franka

I had a similar situation with my dad. Got a new pc for him but he barely touched it. I found this new service called www.famililink.com and this was really helpful for him. The whole site is  specifically designed for eldery.  It provides him with his own email address, where we can send him photos as attachment to and they automatically display. Also we can help him with setting reminders for birthdays etc but also his meds. The communication between us and him and the grandchildren has been improved as he can now easily see all those great digital pictures and receive daily messages

Carla

Thanks for that website, Carla! I'm definitely going to have to check it out. I like the fact that the attachments display automatically- I've had more than one family member get "stuck" trying to figure out how to open a picture attached to an email.

My IL's have a computer and internet which has helped communtication greatly but I haven't had any luck convincing my parents to get one.

Lisa