As you may know, I have recently moved1. The move was more or less successful and in the past several weeks (Actually it has been almost two months as of this writing, but we'll let that detail slide) I've been adjusting to life with Julie and her two children.
Several weeks ago, before Julie and her children went on their week-long vacation, her daughter wanted to have Pages on her iPad. Our workplace is licensed for home use of Pages on Macs by Apple, so I suggested that we get the Mac that she has fixed up and wiped clean so she can use it as a writing computer.
On their own, these suggestions aren't that wild. I recommend things like this to people who have spare computers all the time, and I often find myself using devices like the Surface RT as dedicated writing computers on a regular basis. However, well after it was too late, I realized that I was interfering with a parenting decision Julie was making, which was to not buy Pages for the iPad and to ask her daughter to use Microsoft Word on her existing computer for writing.
I made the suggestion that we clean up the MacBook, which she was also using that day and frustrated with as a result, and install a base Mac OS X 10.8 installation as well as the most recent version of iWork. While I went to my room to go prepare some of these, Julie and her daughter were supposed to coordinate when it would happen and for Rachel to preserve her personal data from the machine. When I got back, which was probably some time later, it happened that I had all of my tools ready and was going to help rebuild the machine with a clean installation of Mac OS X. (Rather than an imaged copy of Julie's work machine.)
Hilariously, by the time I was prepared to do the new installation, her daughter was happily tapping away with Pages on the iPad. I pursued the MacBook for about another hour, until such a time as the MacBook was no longer an issue. In the time since, it has been sitting in what I call the pile of disused computers. That's another issue entirely.
At that point, I decided to let the issue go, and I've got my Mac OS X reinstallation kit handy just in case the issue comes up again. However, it brought up an interesting question: How do you conduct yourself near somebody else's children? It isn't just that I casually come into contact with them every once in a while when there's a Christmas party or on adventures to Phoenix. I actually live in the same house with them, and can't resist little things like providing my own viewpoints on issues such as behavior or advice on the use of technology. I haven't yet figured out if this is a really big deal and something I need to put a big lid on, or if I'm making it into a bigger issue than it really needs to be.
Things like this continue to happen, although the technology incident recounted above is the first example I can think of. The technology incident made me aware that it would be a thing and subsequent examples (I hope) have been less big and egregious. My main issue is that it's very difficult not to try to help with things like asking her children to behave or suggesting methods by which they might get along better. I don't know what I would do with my own children if I ever became a parent, but I do know that it would bother me if a younger person showed up and began (intentionally or not) undermining my own efforts.
- You'll eventually get tired of hearing it, I suppose.