Not long ago, my mom’s birthday passed. I got to reminiscing and I remembered how she seemed to feign this loss of hearing. I say “feign” because it gradually dawned on me that she heard me the first time.
*When others came over, she heard them perfectly.
*She never struggled when someone called on the phone.
*It got to the point where I would test her. I would say something like “The paper boy didn’t deliver yet” and she would reflexively reply “HUH?” and I would say, “It looks like it might rain yet today.” She would blink, like, “That’s not what you said,” but hey. If she didn’t hear me the first time…she can’t say I wasn’t reiterating what I said.
She would tell you that she worked in a factory, was superannuated, etc. But nota bene: years later, she told my sister that she had heard us all along but she wanted to make us repeat it again. Was that covering up her loss of hearing or admitting that she was manipulating us?
I suspect it’s along the lines of laziness. “I could take a moment to reflect and process it but nah, I’ll ask you to repeat it.” Thoughts?
Honestly, I would not be surprised that she’s covering up for hearing loss. The example you gave of the sentences about the paper delivery and the weather do not necessarily mean she heard the entire first sentence, or even the entire second sentence. The sentences are sufficiently different that she may have noticed that aspect and realize you said two different things.
I’m hard of hearing. That’s different than being deaf. I have the volume on my phone as high as it will go, and usually do okay with it. I have the volume on my computer as high as it will go and need to use closed captioning.
The difference between your sentences is so huge that I certainly would know you didn’t say the same thing the second time. I hear some of what you say, or close to what you said without getting everything. For example, I was sitting in the car with my sister and she looked over to the lane next to us and said, “that bastard”. Now, we don’t use language like that in my family generally, and he’d done nothing. I said, “That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” And she said “what???” to which I replied, “Calling that guy a bastard”. She said, “I said, do you think that lane is faster”.
My hearing has gotten much worse than at that time, but I haven’t gotten hearing aids because I live alone, and it’s not bothering me. But when in conversation with others, particularly groups, I tend to tune people out. I have to consciously listen to each person, and process what I think I hear from what’s being said based on context. You probably don’t know how exhausting that is. So often I put a small smile on my face and just coast. Give her a break.
Yeah, my hearing is still okay, but if people don’t enunciate well enough, especially if their "S"es aren’t sibilant enough, I struggle to make it out. Most of the time, I have no problems. One of my daughters speaks very softly and it’s really hard to make out some of what she says (not just by me). The other daughter, never a problem.
To elaborate a bit, for many people, hearing loss is just in particular registers, not the entire range. So if your vocal range or your enunciation falls within that range of loss, she won’t hear it easily.
Since the OP is mentioning “hearing loss” that is deliberate - that is, his mother’s hearing is perfectly fine where other people are concerned - I’d chalk this up to the “familiarity breeds contempt” phenomenon on part of his mom, for lack of a better way to put it (or taking family for granted.) That is to say, she’s okay with being rude to him in a way that she wouldn’t with other, non-family people.
My dad just plain doesn’t bother to pay attention. He can hear perfectly well; but for some reason you have to say several words, possibly a full sentence, before the fact that somebody is talking to him manages to penetrate. If you’re talking to him over the phone, this issue does not arise, because the act of picking up the phone focuses his attention.
My mother lost most of her hearing before I was born, so I grew up watching her cope with it. With a combination of hearing aids and lip reading she could usually get by in one-on-one situations, but was often completely lost when there was another source of noise in the room.
Why does the OP’s mother hear others when they come over? My guess she was looking directly at them and watching them speak.
Why did she hear over the phone? Because it’s directly in her ear and she was concentrating on that to the exclusion of everything else.
When my father got older he started to lose his hearing as well. That led to the most hilarious argument based on mutual misunderstanding I’ve ever witnessed. (It also satisfied my new wife’s curiosity about why I always talked so damn loud.) But that’s an anecdote for another thread.
Because the other people she’s hearing are people she is already focussing on — she’s on the phone, she’s listening to what is being said; people have come over; they are visitors and she is paying attention to them. The OP would probably also have found that, if she initiated the conversation by asking him a question, she had no difficulty hearing the answer, because she was listening for it.
I live with a hard-of-hearing person; I’ve learned that if you want to say something to them, you need to engage their attention first, and then say it.
As someone who is also hard of hearing it sometimes happens I say “Huh” because I don’t understand what is being said but figure it out just after I have asked–and before the person has clarified. There definitely can be a delayed understanding for the hard of hearing.
I think my hearing is starting to go in certain registers, or in noisy environments. I usually get everything still, or close to everything. Sometimes, I miss multiple words, and I can’t immediately make out the sentence, or I know I missed the beginning of it.
I do quickly say “huh?” sometimes when I know I missed something, because I don’t want to miss even more. Sometimes, when I’ve already said “I’m sorry?” or “pardon?” or whatever, I can figure it out from context. That doesn’t mean I should have waited to say something, because I could have missed a lot more, especially if the other person had kept right on talking.
I know it’s a pain to ask people to repeat, but it’s also a pain to miss parts of conversations. The things that help the most are if the person speaking is looking at me, and has gotten my attention first.
This post, I’m going to say as calmly as I possibly can, is a perfect example of a person not listening.
You, that is.
You know perfectly well, presumably due to years of experience, that your dad needs to have a lead time in which to organise his thoughts in order to accept audio input, otherwise it gets lost. You see that when he has this time (like in a phone call) everything works perfectly fine, but that when he doesn’t have notification time, he loses the first half of a sentence. And instead of just saying “hey Dad” and waiting two seconds till you have his attention, you … what … persist in just starting to say words with no notification and getting snarky at him for not having an ability that he’s never actually had?
If he needs notification then GIVE him notification. This brain system that just loops continually waiting for audio input and picks it up automatically when you weren’t expecting it? Let me give you some advice here.
Not
Everyone
Has
This
In
Their
Brain
(yes, that was as calmly as possible, given the subject. Blame the decades-worth of people who I’ve asked to tell me when they’re about to say something, and Didn’t Goddamn Listen To Me When I Told Them How My Brain Works for my crankiness)
But it’s also true that that sort of hearing loss can, for lack of a better word, be “spotty”. Background noise can really screw with me - I can hear that you’re speaking but not make out the words.
In some pitches/registers my hearing is crap. In others it’s almost superhuman because, apparently, that part of the range isn’t damaged. So some things I hear with no trouble at all, others get lost in background noise.
I probably should get a hearing test, but I’m leery of the places saying “Free Hearing Test!” in neon on the front window.
At work I’ve told folks that I don’t hear as well as the young’uns and they make some effort to get my attention and don’t automatically assume I’m ignoring them when what’s actually the problem is that I didn’t hear them.
I once said to her, “This hearing loss of yours concerns me. You ought to see the doctor. Now there are hearing aids you can get that will really help. I mean, imagine if you’re driving the car and you don’t hear something…that could be dangerous!” She said she thought she’d be just fine and her hearing improved immensely for a week or two. Uh huh.
I worked with a guy. We’d have a conversation like this:
Me: Matthew’s taking tomorrow off.
Him: Huh?
Me: And we have that meeting this afternoon.
Him: Right, that meeting. Hope it doesn’t last too long. Yeah Matthew said he needed a little time off.
It’s like he heard all the words but it doesn’t sink in immediately…rather than take half a second to put it together, he wanted me to repeat it for him. We all need that sometimes I guess, but some people are serial offenders who do it regularly.
Hearing loss in familiar others can be annoying. I am living with this, with my husband. Every time I say something to him I have to say his name, wait some seconds until he looks up and focuses on me, and then say what I have to say. If I just talk normally, everything I said will have to be repeated from the point at which he looks up and focuses.
It’s irritating but it isn’t a deliberate insult, the way you seem to believe. As with some others mentioned in this thread, it is as much a processing issue as a hearing issue.
As someone with diminished hearing, another aspect is that different people simple speak differently. Some produce crisp clear sounds at a volume and pace that I can hear and make out perfectly well. While others elide their words, speak more softly, “swallow” their words, etc. etc., making it more difficult for me to tell what they are saying, resulting in the inevitable “huh?”. Perhaps the OP is actually speaking in a manner that is more difficult for their mother to hear clearly.