I always ask my clients if they are hearing impaired. Hearing disabilities are invisible and, if undisclosed, can lead to misunderstanding, embarrassment and isolation. As the child of a 50% deaf parent, I grew up with an acute understanding of these painful occurrences. In fact, I became a “hearing ear child”, nudging, interpreting, repeating and generally helping to make the outside world more intelligible.
Times have changed; 70 years ago, a child with impaired hearing was simply told to sit at the front of every class. This may have helped with volume, but not when the teacher turned his or her back every so often to write on the board, and the opportunity to lip-read was lost. Too many people have grown up apologising for not hearing and feeling that deafness is a personal failing. Living in a world where everyone hears much better than you do, even your own family, leads to shyness and a tendency to isolate and feel inadequate.
Now that hearing impairment is recognised as a disability and those suffering from it are increasingly encouraged to tell people, shame and isolation may decrease. It won’t happen overnight, however. The next time someone smiles and nods when you speak to them, says “really?” a lot (a much better guess than “yes” or “no” when you haven’t heard) or answers inappropriately, think: they may be deaf.
We are all living busier lives, speaking faster, moving more, putting our hands in front of our faces. All of this places at a disadvantage someone who relies on lip-reading to supplement their hearing. And that person may never tell you that they can’t hear too well; they put up with missing out, with feeling inadequate, with embarrassment.
So what can we do? First of all, please remember that some people need to see your face while you are talking. That includes keeping your hands away from your mouth. Background noise can also be a real problem, and some hearing impaired people either avoid such environments or would rather wait until it’s quieter to talk. And, if you meet with new people for work, why not do what I do and routinely ask if they have hearing issues? If we don’t talk about it, this invisible disability will remain invisible.
Both my aged parents are quite deaf; have hearing aids they refuse to wear, both insist on not listening but speaking to what they THOUGHT you said. Usually both at the same time but to different topics! It is extremely frustrating when this happens and you are trying to sort out an issue for their well being – not just having casual conversation.
They are both quite good at lip reading, but tend to not look at you, or the girl at the bread counter, when they are being addressed and thus, they get it totally wrong.
On many occasions, I have to tell them both to just be quiet, and listen, while I explain what is going on. That usually sorts things out!
That does sound frustrating. Did they lose their hearing with age? I think that makes it a lot more difficult; people who are born with impaired hearing find it normal and naturally learn to look at faces, lip-read etc. Those who lose hearing later in life seem to find it more difficult to acquire these habits. Also, in my case, if you are brought up by someone with a hearing problem you acquire them yourself too!
I’ve also been around people with hearing problems, and learned to pay attention to their face to see if they are hearing. They end up not joining the conversation when they realize they interpreted things wrong. They also won’t wear hearing aids, since the technology still has issues with feedback and removing noise.
I am hearing impaired in my right ear—have been most of my life. Teachers often thought I was making up my hearing problem, even though a classroom hearing test in grade 3 or 4 confirmed I had one.
Another tell-tale sign of a hearing impairment is when people have loud speaking voices. This is extremely annoying to some people I know, and when they tell me that I am speaking too loudly, I try to take it down a notch. I am honestly unaware that my voice is that loud.
My grandparents were both hard of hearing and had trouble hearing me. As I got older, I learned how to talk to them better, and often had to repeat myself–something that I learned to handle easier as I got older as well (you know, without the teenage eyeroll LOL). Now my mom and my father-in-law have hearing issues (both for different reasons) and while it can be frustrating at times, it’s far easier to deal with now.
Great advice. My dad is 89 and quite hearing impaired (for 25 years). It’s bad enough for him when people talk down to the elderly, but when he can’t hear them well, it makes it even worse.
It’s great to know this is striking a chord. It makes me think I need to talk about hearing on a more regular basis, with different people, and try and increase awareness. If hearing people are more aware, hearing impaired people might have a better time.