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She pushes buttons like crazy, gets into menus that record millions of hours of infomercials, turns off my husband's programming, and she gets frustrated and throws the remote. I know there must be an assistive tech device out there that will work. My husband says the remote must be UHF for it to work on her TV. She has separate living quarters downstairs, in our house. We have one dish, one receiver, with two "sides" to it. I've tried pre-programming her viewing schedule, but often it will change channels to a new program before the last minute or so of the previous program has finished. We all hate missing the climax of a drama or finding out who-dun-it, etc. Help!

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I think it's probably beyond your moms abilites to deal with any remote. My folks are mid 80s and simply cannot deal with any new stuff. I'm currently trying to teach mom how to use her new elder friendly cordless phone and it's been totally exasperating.

Keep the remotes away from her if possible.
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Remotes, cell phones (or even cordless phones), computers.....a lot of the time they're beyond the capabilities of our elderly loved ones. There were times my dad would do the same things as your mom, pull up all kinds of menus and lord only knows what else on his TV. Screens I'd never even seen before. I'd call on my then 15 year old daughter to come and fix it and she'd push a button or two and voila! My dad would have his TV back.

In thinking about my own remote and wondering if I could teach a 90-something person to use it I don't think I could. Two buttons have to be pressed to get the TV on, first the one button then the other. And then once the TV is on another button has to be pressed in order to flip the channels and look at the guide. Then the process is reversed to shut the whole thing down.

It might be too much for your mom.
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I still have a remote that my Dad handmade 50+ years ago, of course its no longer usable, but it was so easy to use. Had 8 buttons.... two buttons to turn the TV on and off.... two buttons to raise and lower the volume.... two buttons to change the channels [all 3 of the channels].... and two buttons to turn on and off the table lamp next to the sofa.

Couldn't lose the remote, it had to sit on the table next to the sofa as there were wires running down into the floor which went into the basement and came back up to the back of the TV.

My Dad now lives in senior living facility, and the receptionist told us it is a daily thing with residents pushing the wrong buttons and not be able to use their TV. Dad, who is 94, needs to have maintenance come in at least once every couple of weeks to reset his TV. The remote he has isn't too bad, but it still has too many buttons that he doesn't need.

Dad keeps his TV mainly on one station all day... the local 24 hour news channel.
He has cable for the first time in his life, I was hoping he would take advantage of it such as the History channel, the the channels that have the old game shows from the 1950's, or the channel with all the old western TV shows. Nope, gotta watch the news.
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Have you tried a Flipper? They have big buttons for the elderly and are pretty simple to use. They have them on Amazon. She'll need the one for 2 devices, though you can make it so she can only operate the TV if you want to. I don't know if they're UHF and how they do with a satellite box, but they work wonderfully with our Charter Cable setup.
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There is only one problem that we run into with Flipper. My mother will point it at the ceiling to turn things off. We want both the TV and cable box to go off, but only the TV will when she does that. It's easy for me to bring them back in sync, but I do get a bit tired of doing it. We can't make the cable box not respond, because she wouldn't be able to change channels. So I just bring things back in sync whenever they're not.
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Thanks for the ideas. She's angry today, I called SrServices to ask about respite care for me (I'm all she's got, at this point) and she told the caseworker she wants to go into assisted living because her daughter can't take care of her. I called her bluff and made appointments to go look at facilities, and now I'm hearing that I'm throwing her out.
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