Hearing loss is a natural and common part of aging, but when someone realizes he or she is hard of hearing, it can take a bit of getting used to. Adult children can help their parent adapt. If your parent has a decline in hearing, here are some easy things that you can do to stay frustration-free and keep the lines of communication open:
- During conversations, make sure to face your parent directly in a well-lit room, especially if he or she relies to some extent on speechreading and gestures. Try to keep your hands away from your mouth, and it’s also best to be in a quiet room or to turn down the TV or eliminate other background noise. It can be challenging for people with hearing loss to filter out background noise, so this could make a conversation difficult.
- If your parent has not understood what you said, find a different way to say it rather than repeating yourself. If your parent was unable to hear you the first time, it’s likely that he or she will not understand you the second time because certain sounds may be difficult for your parent to hear, depending upon what type of hearing loss he or she has.
- Talk slowly but not in an exaggeratedly slow way, which can distort your words. Also, we sometimes get used to mumbling, but try to speak with as much clarity as possible, and at a slower pace if you know you typically speak very quickly.
- In a group setting, make sure not to interrupt the speaker or talk over each other, which makes hearing even more difficult.
- If you notice that your parent is struggling to hear on the phone, invest in the CapTel captioned telephone. It’s very senior friendly because it’s just like a regular phone, except that it allows the user to read captions and listen to the speaker simultaneously. This is one of the simplest and most effective hearing loss solutions because, unlike other devices or technologies, it doesn’t require an older adult to learn something new and thus can be used right away to give a boost to make phone conversations go smoothly.
- While talking in the car, turn down the music, roll up the windows and even shut the air conditioning off if that helps. Car conversations are nice on one hand because you can often control much of the background noise. On the other hand, when one person is driving, it’s unsafe to face the other person for long periods or to take one’s hands off of the steering wheel to gesture, so this could potentially limit car conversation for someone heavily reliant on speechreading. However, some people use assistive listening devices like small FM systems or personal amplifiers for talking in the car.
