Convincing your parents to wear hearing aids can be challenging, but it’s essential for their overall well-being. Based on my 20 years of medical practice and helping over 300,000 people get affordable hearing assistance, here are some tips to approach the conversation.
- Don’t confuse hearing with understanding speech. It has been my experience that many people with hearing problems don’t feel that they have a problem hearing. I always asked my patients not if they have trouble hearing, but rather if they have trouble understanding speech. They will most likely agree with this statement.
What this means is the patient can hear fairly well in the sense that they can hear sound. By missing out on the higher frequencies, they only hear part of a word instead of the whole thing. Therefore they have to guess what the word is. Particularly if they can’t see who’s speaking or if there is background noise, they often don’t guess right. From their standpoint it sounds like they are hearing OK but people are mumbling.
Because of the preservation in lower frequencies the patient will often say that they hear quite well but will readily admit that they have trouble understanding speech, particularly in background noise.
Once the patient understands that hearing speech and understanding it are two different things, they often are willing to give hearing assistance a try.
- Discuss the recent medical studies have linked untreated hearing loss to higher risks of depression, social isolation, falls, cognitive decline, and even dementia. Ignoring hearing loss likely will increase their risk of ending up in a nursing home – something people might be motivated to avoid.
- Don’t raise your voice when speaking to them. Always speak clearly and normally. Respond to “What???” with a simple repeat with the same normal volume and speed. If we simply repeat the sentence louder, they might simply think we were mumbling the first time. I might walk right up to a patient with hearing loss and repeat what i send directly into their ear so they can clearly understand how difficult it is to communicate.
- I have seen many people refuse to wear a hearing aid, but they are happy to embrace other technology that helps them understand conversations better. One device in particular that is really effective and easy to use is the ClearCast PAL™ device. Once they get a feel for how much better they hear with a ClearCast, they can understand how much they have been missing.
5 . Sometimes a role model is what’s needed. Someone who is successfully wearing an aid to tell the reluctant how nice it is not to have to strain to listen anymore, and how it’s so much less embarrassing now they’re not having to get things repeated.
- If your parent is still hesitant, consider getting an opinion from an ENT doctor. Many people trust what a physician tells them and this could motivate them to try hearing assistance.
