Tech support for your parents

Tip 3: Take a deep breath

It can be infuriating to help your parents with technology. Sometimes, all they have to do is move the mouse, and you're 12 years old again: frustrated, small, and resentful. Your parents can push all your buttons -- after all, they installed them.

But you can't help them install digital camera software if you're impatient or short with them. Teaching the previous generation things that are second nature to you is difficult in any circumstance, even more so when you're dealing with your parents. Here are some tips to bridge the generation gap.

• Do no harm. You might be tempted to help them by tweaking their computer to work the way yours does. Don't. Your parents might have a reason for their different way of doing things, and even if they don't, they might just be used to it. To really help, adapt yourself to their computers and don't force them to work like you do.
• Listen and learn. Your parents may do the same things with the computer or the Internet that you do but in a different way. And they may call it different things. Yahoo may be "the Web." Microsoft Word might just be called "Microsoft." This isn't the time to correct them. Learn their lingo and explain things in terms they already use.
• Don't think you know more than they do. Age is not a handicap when dealing with computers. You may be surprised how adept an octogenarian is with instant messaging, Quicken, photo sharing, or even Doom 3. Experience and wisdom can breed stubbornness, and it can also breed flexibility. 

Additional editing by Tom Espiner