Why Tho? How can I help my hard-of-hearing dad understand me?

Dear Lizzy,

I wonder if you can help me with a question about hearing loss. My dad is in his late 80s and lives across the country, so we chat regularly on the phone. He’s a great talker, but I know he struggles to hear and understand me. I’m about to go for a visit and I’m trying to strategize how to communicate. He’s stopped wearing his hearing aids because he just finds them too upsetting, despite multiple efforts to work with his provider to adjust them. I try to project, lower my pitch and make eye contact, but it’s still hard.

How can I help my dad understand me in person and on the phone?

The thing is, I have some hearing loss too, so I get it. Restaurants and other noisy places are torture. (I try all the tricks, like sitting against a wall or a window, never with my back to the crowd, that kind of thing.) Hearing aids kind of help, but nothing sounds “normal” and it’s still exhausting trying to make out people’s words. I have to push myself hard to socialize because I know how frustrating many social situations will be. I don’t want to be isolated and I don’t want my dad to be isolated.

How can we all help each other out?

Trying to Listen

Dear Trying to Listen,

I started to answer your question last week on my podcast when it occurred to me – I need professional help with this one! So I reached out to The Oregon Clinic’s audiology clinic.

One of the audiologists, Heather Fischle, was kind enough to offer the following advice (edited for length):

It sounds like you are already aware that hearing aids are not a fix for hearing loss. While they aid in amplifying sounds specific to your hearing loss, they don’t give you the hearing you had in your 20s. As adults acquire hearing loss, it is generally a high-frequency hearing loss (think: a loss in the treble sounds, but not the bass sounds). They will miss certain sounds like, “s” and “th” which can really affect the clarity of words. Those sounds are easier to see on the mouth, which is why most people with this hearing loss will need to see your face to “hear you” clearly.

When a hearing aid amplifies that section, it is to give you clarity, but it can’t differentiate those speech sounds vs. environmental sounds, so unfortunately it amplifies both. Hearing aid technology has improved in the last few years to combat this issue, but most people will still feel tired after a long day of listening to others in complex environments.

I don’t recommend only wearing hearing aids in those difficult environments because your brain must get used to this new input and overcome the challenge of background noise. The only way to really get the benefit out of a hearing aid is to push through that one to two month period of annoying and sometimes loud environmental sounds and get the brain adjusted to this new input. That requires use during all waking hours, even if you’re just sitting in quiet. If this is successfully done and there is still no benefit, depending on the severity of hearing loss, a more powerful hearing aid or even a cochlear implant may be recommended, but this is a conversation you would need to have with your audiologist.

There are assistive devices that you might discuss with your audiologist (such as partner microphones) that may assist both of you too.

You’re already using great communication techniques to try and improve communication. I would encourage you to keep that up. You may also try choosing places to meet with less background noise, or try to use an app called “Ava: transcribe voice to text.” Ava is real-time closed caption. It works great on phones or iPads in areas that aren’t overly loud (and it’s free!).

Hope that helps!

Lizzy again! I also think it’s important to keep trying to connect with your dad, even if it can be frustrating at times. Don’t give up, because human connection is so important to health, and, well, it feels good. It also might be helpful to talk to your dad about your own struggles with hearing. There is so much stigma attached to hearing loss, but it is extremely common and, it might help your dad feel less lonely and isolated if you share your experiences. We discussed several other ideas on the podcast last week too, so listen to that as well. And let me know how it goes!

Good luck!

Lizzy

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