Animation help! please... it is very easy i guess..

Hey... I am trying to learn animation with maya but it seems I am having more trouble every step of the way, and in my town i got nobody to ask for help...
The thing is I am from Pergamino a small village in Argentina... And i got maya from a friend, who got no idea at all of using this software.
I try to start learning from the maya tutorials. As I was going through all the lessons I noticed how complex this program was getting.
I am in the animation part by now. But no matter how hard i try i can`t animate that mechanical arm the tutorial shows. since i didn`t get any of the getting started folder, I had to build the entire arm by myself.
THe thing is I applied the joints with those "four clicks" indicating the arm segments. I parent them with the parts i´ve modelled but when I put the Ik handle tool they don`t quite follow the joints. I got pics of these problems so you can help me out better.
The "arm end" kindda obbey the structure but arms 1 , 2 flip off and doesn`t even follow the joints... I thought it could have something to do with the Pivots of the arms... but even though i moved them it doesn`t change anything... I hope you can tell what i am doing wrong...
You can answer here, or at my personal email: diego_fx@yahoo.com
Thank you,
hope you understand my english.
DIego