Electronics

[Plaid Pants]

On 2/23/2015 GoodStuff said:

On 2/22/2015 Scooby Doo said:

On 2/22/2015 Plaid Pants said:

On 2/22/2015 GoodStuff said:

I am in my 60's and would have LOL'd at the child's perceptive question. I think a lot of older people do have a hard time with electronic gadgets......while using them seems to come very easily and naturally to the young. Who can blame the child for noticing and asking? And I don't see anything disrespectful about referring to the grandmother as "old people"! You have to be really sour and stiff to miss the humor in aging, or to think no one notices. The child didn't use some expletive or "insult" the grandmother. She simply asked why older people buy devices they don't seem to be able to learn to use. A good question, I'd say.

Agreed!

I don't think this child said anything close to "insulting".

So, children who ask questions are "spoiled" and "brats"?

Don't think so.

This child was merely asking a simple question.

To some here, she should be tarred and feathered for that.

How dare she ask a question!

No, this child is no "brat".

She is merely inquisitive.

She's petulant, not inquisitive.

Since we didn't see the granddaughter's facial expression or hear her inflection, it really isn't possible to know her mood or intent, and we're all making assumptions. I tend to be direct and sometimes a bit tart, and I enjoy humor........ so that's what I'm imagining in this interaction. I don't see tart humor between generations as necessarily "disrespectful". I have great grown kids, and we give each other the business all the time. We enjoy each other and love to laugh. And while we love and respect each other, we also love to poke fun at each other's quirks and inconsistencies.......which are numerous.

Exactly.

People are ready to tar and feather this poor girl over one comment.

One comment does NOT give the total picture of who she is as a person.

The girl could have been frustrated, and who here hasn't said something in frustration? When you do, does that mean that you are a "spoiled brat"? No, it doesn't.

[Scooby Doo]

On 2/23/2015 Plaid Pants said:

On 2/23/2015 GoodStuff said:

On 2/22/2015 Scooby Doo said:

On 2/22/2015 Plaid Pants said:

On 2/22/2015 GoodStuff said:

I am in my 60's and would have LOL'd at the child's perceptive question. I think a lot of older people do have a hard time with electronic gadgets......while using them seems to come very easily and naturally to the young. Who can blame the child for noticing and asking? And I don't see anything disrespectful about referring to the grandmother as "old people"! You have to be really sour and stiff to miss the humor in aging, or to think no one notices. The child didn't use some expletive or "insult" the grandmother. She simply asked why older people buy devices they don't seem to be able to learn to use. A good question, I'd say.

Agreed!

I don't think this child said anything close to "insulting".

So, children who ask questions are "spoiled" and "brats"?

Don't think so.

This child was merely asking a simple question.

To some here, she should be tarred and feathered for that.

How dare she ask a question!

No, this child is no "brat".

She is merely inquisitive.

She's petulant, not inquisitive.

Since we didn't see the granddaughter's facial expression or hear her inflection, it really isn't possible to know her mood or intent, and we're all making assumptions. I tend to be direct and sometimes a bit tart, and I enjoy humor........ so that's what I'm imagining in this interaction. I don't see tart humor between generations as necessarily "disrespectful". I have great grown kids, and we give each other the business all the time. We enjoy each other and love to laugh. And while we love and respect each other, we also love to poke fun at each other's quirks and inconsistencies.......which are numerous.

Exactly.

People are ready to tar and feather this poor girl over one comment.

One comment does NOT give the total picture of who she is as a person.

The girl could have been frustrated, and who here hasn't said something in frustration? When you do, does that mean that you are a "spoiled brat"? No, it doesn't.

Admitting that you've been petulant does not change the meaning of the word.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/petulant

It's a word, a definition, a description of the sentence she made. That's why we have dickshonaries.

[jaxs mom]

On 2/23/2015 mima said:

I actually can see where the granddaughter could get frustrated and blurted out how she felt. I'm almost 60 and my mom is almost 80. I'm fairly tech savvy and own a Samsung NOte 3. She had a dumb cell phone she used all the time but she wanted one where the pictures were bigger (like mine) and you could zoom in to see better. So she bought a smartphone. I told her I'd set it up and teach her how to use it. I got so frustrated with her. I would show her the same thing over and over. She just couldn't learn how to use it. After a year she gave up and went back to her dumb phone. Of course, being and adult I tried to hide my frustrations with her and didn't ask her why she bought it! LOL

She couldn't learn simple things. Once a week she would call me and say all her icons were gone. Everything was off the phone. They got erased. She was downright panicky. I would go over to her house and she just had it on a different home screen. She had 5 homescreens. It was that type of thing constantly over and over.

If my GD would have talked to me that way, I would have laughed it off on the outside, but I would have been hurt on the inside.

Oh boy do I hear you.

[seattlegirl98026]

If a grandchild or younger family member spoke to me this way, I would be offended but probably wouldn't let it show. Usually my comeback is, "Hey, I used to change your dirty diapers!". This usually both embarrasses them and gives them something to think about

[NYC Susan]

We all understand getting frustrated. It happens to everyone. But there are ways to express frustration without being so obviously rude and disrespectful.

A teenager should certainly know by now that we can't just say whatever we feel like saying whenever the mood strikes us. If we could, then people would constantly be crying, screaming, and shouting mean things at each other! A toddler can't be expected to show restraint and compassion for others, but this girl is old enough to be aware of the impact of words. Not everyone would find what she said amusing, and one day she's going to say the wrong thing to the wrong person.

The only way I could possibly excuse what she said would be if she immediately followed it with a sincere apology. Or - in a family that jokes around a lot, such as mine - if she made it sound like a joke. But the OP's description of what happened certainly didn't make it sound as though it was either of those things. "You old people"? No, sorry, I don't find that amusing at all.

eta: My 87 year-old father is far more proficient with "these devices" than people decades younger!

[NYC Susan]

On 2/23/2015 NC Bandwagon said:

Hello, seniorcitizen and welcome.

This isn't to be mean to you, but the next time the granddaughter is having trouble with a homework problem and isn't getting right it fast enough, someone might want to say to her, "why do you young people even bother going to school for anything? You're just going to get pregnant and drop out anyway."

After the granddaughter runs away crying and screaming about how "mean and unfair" her family is to her, remind of the moment she was impatient to her grandmother for not getting something right within the first 5 seconds. She'll then know how awful her grandmother felt.

I'm sure she loves her grandmother very much and she's still learning, but she does need to learn to be patient with others. Hardly anyone learns anything overnight and she's no exception.

Sorry if that sounds mean, but this can simply be a lesson for the granddaughter, that's all.

[number one queen]

My niece is13 ,very bright in everything it seems my hubby is 64, loves his old flip phone, she came to see us and asked hubby when he was going to get into the 21st century and by a modern phone. Hubby is not to happy that our niece seems to think we are in the senior mode!

[Plaid Pants]

On 2/22/2015 seniorcitizen said:

Well at least my friend who is the grandmother involved and I got a good laugh at it.

And that's all that is important.

After all, who knows this child better? A bunch of people who have fake names on an anonymous shopping bulletin board, or her own grandmother?

If the child's own grandmother saw the comment as no-big-deal, then nothing else matters.

[jaxs mom]

On 2/23/2015 Plaid Pants said:

On 2/22/2015 seniorcitizen said:

Well at least my friend who is the grandmother involved and I got a good laugh at it.

And that's all that is important.

After all, who knows this child better? A bunch of people who have fake names on an anonymous shopping bulletin board, or her own grandmother?

If the child's own grandmother saw the comment as no-big-deal, then nothing else matters.

I completely agree.

[NYC Susan]

On 2/23/2015 Plaid Pants said:

On 2/22/2015 seniorcitizen said:

Well at least my friend who is the grandmother involved and I got a good laugh at it.

And that's all that is important.

After all, who knows this child better? A bunch of people who have fake names on an anonymous shopping bulletin board, or her own grandmother?

If the child's own grandmother saw the comment as no-big-deal, then nothing else matters.

I disagree.

Lots of parents & grandparents think their little darlings are ever-so-adorable when others find them to be bratty & obnoxious. What Grandma thinks is cute might not go over so well in the real world, and I think we've all seen examples of that time & time again!

I'm not saying that this particular girl is bratty and/or obnoxious, but I do think her comment was rude & disrespectful. And even putting that aside, I just don't see it as amusing or funny.