NOW HEAR THIS

The other night I was at one of those eternal church suppers, at a round table that seated three women and four men, all of whom were well over fifty years of age. Of the group of seven, four men and one woman suffered some hearing loss ranging from mild to moderate. All five wore ahearing aid most of their waking hours but one male only wore his when the spirit moved him. He had moderate hearing loss but he misses about half of most conversations and is constantly asking folks to repeat what they said.

The table discussion led to sharing problems of hearing loss and how people cope with communication mix-ups. Some of the problems concerned ambient background noise and how we each had to pay particular attention to the person we were talking to at any given time if we were to get the gist of a conversation. Its easy if the speaker is facing you and is fairly close (like across the table), but if the speaker is at the next table and has his or her back to you you might as well forget it. We all read lips and facial expressions and bodily posturing. Hearing impaired people depend heavily on this additional communication support. So it is important that we can see you from a frontal view or we will get mixed up messages. Sometimes very different than the sender intended.

One of the things that causes hearing impaired people to grumble a lot is trying to cope with people who reduce the degree of loudness they project at the end of a sentence. In short, they drop their voices at the end of important sentences. We hearing impaired people miss a lot of punch lines because of this and we usually miss key words in sermons or after-dinner speeches. The latter is no big loss unless you have to discuss the speech in small groups later. But what well intentioned preacher wants you to miss the key points in his/her sermon? Professional actors who have been well trained know that the secret to having your audience with you is to raise your voice a bit at the end of each sentence. That takes some practice but it is amazing how well you come across if you do this.

Another thing that causes trouble is getting people to repeat what they have just said. What we usually want is the last few words because those are the ones on which you drop your voice . What usually happens is that you then try to explain what you just said in a different way, assuming that we did not understand you. That just makes it more confusing because we now have the first part of one communication but not the last and we have a new communication that does not compute when taken with the first statement. Just repeat the last few words and we will understand much better.

For men who are hearing impaired the condition usually comes on gradually and it is often marked by women’s voices becoming less perceptible. When accused of speaking too softly women usually respond that they are using their normal voice. What really happens is that men’s hearing loss is usually in the higher voice frequency ranges thus they easily hear other men but not women. Women on the other hand are likely to have hearing loss in the lower frequency ranges thus have trouble hearing men’s voices, especially if the men drop their voices at the end of each sentence or at the punch line of an important bit of news about a neighbor or friend.

One other problem for the hearing impaired is that of trying to hear a speaker who opts to sit down while giving a lecture or address. Refer back to the bit on lip reading and body language and add to that the speaker who reads from notes on table while sitting down and leaning forward so that none of the usual visual hearing supports are visible.

So here is what we wish you would do to help us understand you.

Face us when you speak and don’t cover your mouth with your hand or your notes. We can’t see through them to read your lips or body language.
Learn to raise you voice slightly at the end of sentences, especially where punch lines are appended.
Stand up when speaking to a group. Avoid sitting down to make a speech or teach a class.
When asked, repeat the last few words of what you just said or clarify a specific word, rather than rephrasing a whole sentence or paragraph when all that is missing is one or two words.
Finally, don’t get upset with us when we do not hear you. We did not become hard of hearing just to mess with your lives. In fact we mostly hate the fact that our hearing loss is a burden for you to bear, and most hard of hearing people will work very hard to lighten your load by buying and using hearing aids or having surgery or whatever the otolaryngologist (that’s ear noses and throat doctor) suggests.