Time to Read: 3 minutes
This is a transcript to Audiologist Cara Sutton’s video on Hearing Loss and Family You can subscribe to our YouTube channel here. Subscribing, hitting the like button, sharing the video and leaving a comment ensures you never miss a video, and YouTube makes it easier for other people to find these helpful videos.
Hi everyone, it's Cara again from Value Hearing and over the past few weeks I have been uploading a few videos to provide hearing awareness and of course this week is no exception.
So today I will be discussing how hearing loss affects family.
Hearing loss is a very personal condition and it has a huge impact on friends and family, so to give you some insight into the way conversation works, you have two components - you have the listening side and the auditory processing side.
The listening side is the easy part. It's just understanding the information that takes a little bit of time and effort. Now, you can understand that if you have a hearing loss the listening part is difficult and if you have pieced enough of that information together then you can comprehend it otherwise the message does get jumbled.
Feeling ignored
When it comes to family members, they often tend to think that a person is perhaps ignoring them or that they are not interested in what is being said and that's why hearing loss in the home can lead to arguments and friction.
Another example of this would be something like the volume of the tv which made just too loud for other people but a person with hearing loss is not able to understand what is being said unless it is at that level.
So if you are having any of these difficulties you most certainly are not alone because more than half of adults over the age of 60 have some degree of hearing loss.
If lately you are starting to notice that you are having difficulty understanding children's voices or understanding female voices that could be a good indication that you have some degree of undiagnosed hearing loss.
As we age, our higher tones tend to deteriorate first and that's why children's voices and female voices start to become difficult to hear. A good idea then would be to come and have your hearing assessed.
Comprehensive hearing assessments
At Value Hearing we offer comprehensive hearing assessments. We have many clinics across Australia so please have a look and see which one is closest to you. We can provide you with some good recommendations on what to do with your hearing levels.
Of course when hearing is optimized, you can start to enjoy family gatherings and fully participate in conversation with friends and family and that improves your quality of life.
Conversational Tips
I want to leave you just with one last thought and it's just a few tips on how to deal with someone that has hearing loss and how to optimize conversation.
The best thing to do is just to make sure that if you are having a conversation with someone that there's good lighting that you are able to see each other's faces because that provides you with good visual cues. People with hearing loss often do tend to rely on lip reading and if your hand is in front of your mouth or they are unable to see your face that can cause some frustration during conversation.
It's also really good to make sure that you are facing each other and not speaking across distances as that also becomes really difficult. Make sure you're speaking slowly and concisely and again that will lead to less conversational breakdown.
I hope that has been insightful today. And if you enjoyed this video please give us a thumbs up and if you're enjoying the content we are sharing please feel free to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
