She did not seem to feel that this showed the right spirit...

The trick is figuring out how to seem to answer their questions without inspiring their curiousity. What you need is opaque tech-talk and jargon -- preferably jargon which sounds as though they should already know it, though you've made it up yourself and it means "that stuff I do" -- which will impress on them their ignorance and dependence, as well as impressing them with results.

I need to impress their ignorance on them but I don't want to encourage dependence on me. They can use some outside agency and get out of my life and I'll be happy. (Well, some of them, anyhow.)