What do you make of people who are "hard of hearing?"

In My Humble Opinion
22

Also hard of hearing here, though I’ve worn hearing aids for the last five years. I often do not wear them at home when I’m “casual,” so my wife is the one who suffers the most.

As others have mentioned, it is often difficult to understand someone when you don’t expect them to say something. If the person approaches you from behind or is not facing you, their voice may alert you to an “incoming message,” but you don’t catch all the important parts. I may catch a couple words,or simply the rhythm of the statement, but not the full meaning. Having them face you as they speak is obviously a huge help.

One other thing that makes it very hard to understand someone is if they have a speaking pattern that emphasizes the words that they believe are important…but otherwise trails off. I have friends who will say something like, “Next WEDNESDAY, I’m going to [trails off into something unintelligible to me].” To them, the important phrase is about when they are going to do something. Exactly what they are going to do gets sort of swallowed as they rush to finish the sentence. This is frustrating as hell. Of course, I’ll say, “Excuse me. I didn’t catch that.” Then they will loudly say again, “NEXT WEDNESDAY!!” I usually give up at that point and just say, “How nice for you.”

My wife is very kind and understanding. She always alerts me she is going to start speaking, usually by simply saying my name. Once I’m looking at her or paying attention, she will say what she wants to, being careful to emphasize all the words and phrases equally. Makes a world of difference in conversations.

23

I’ve got a few hard-of-hearing people in my life, and you know what? This was excellent advice for me. Thanks!

24

OMG! This is my spouse. They have a talent for swallowing the significant words in a statement. What I hear is, “I was talking to (mumble) and they said you should call them regarding (mumble).”

25

Most of my life I’ve had what I once heard called “dogs’ ears” but which I described more like “farsightedness, but for hearing.” I could hear stuff pretty accurately from across the room, but up close stuff sometimes seemed muffled.

Many years of loud concerts have left with with sporadic tinnitus, though. Silver lining to the lack of social interaction over the last two years is that most of my conversations have been one-on-one or in very small groups, so I don’t need to have people repeat themselves often. Bad hearing comes with age in my family, though. My dad’s has been in decline for decades, and I think he wears a discreet hearing aid now.

We had a guy in our office who was a real pain in the ass about it though. I’m convinced he was mostly deaf but out of vanity refused to acknowledge it. His regular speaking voice was nearly a yell…he wasn’t openly yelling, but it was like someone had turned up the volume knob on regular speech. And a conversation with him always had a ton of “WHA? WHA?” from his side. Bring it up and he’d throw a nutty. Kind of a relief when he retired, TBH.

26

Oh Boy. This hits close to home.

I’m hard of hearing due to raging tinnitus. I have hearing aids, but the tinnitus still covers up certain frequencies. It may be a different kind of hearing loss really.

Often, if ENGAGED in a conversation you can figure stuff out based on the context of the conversation, facial ques and stuff like that help too.

My Wife has the unfortunate habit of starting a conversation on page two. You see, she has already been thinking about something and wants to talk about it. But I don’t know what she was thinking about, so have no context to puzzle things out. Combine that with my loss of hearing, and it gets rough.

True story - My Wife is going to make a special dinner this Saturday for my Birthday. She out of the blue this morning, while I was working said “I can’t find the butcher online, he must not have a website”

I thought she said “I can’t find the book you ordered online, it’s not on the website”
We had talked about this meal a few days ago, but had since ordered a book.

Another one. We had been talking about me having to pick something up. It was furniture that we purchased. She made some phone calls that I did not even know about and came to my office and said “You have and appointment at noon on Tuesday” Ummm… What? An appointment? For what? Turns out I can pick up the furniture on Tuesday. Furniture will be there by noon. Poor phrasing and also started out on page two on her part.

I love my Wife dearly, but wish she wouldn’t assume I already know what she is thinking about.

Long story short, If I know the context of the conversation, I can generally put two and two together. If it’s a statement out of left field, I have trouble.

Work meetings are much better now on zoom. People take their turns it seems. AND I can wear headphones. There is one co-worker (that I work closely with and respect very much) that mumbles. She does not enunciate. And she mumbles fast.

I much prefer written communication for work.

Anyway. If there is not a conversation going on with some context, for myself at least, give me a heads up. And don’t start in the middle of what you where thinking about. Start from the beginning.

27

I’m sure my husband thinks I’m hard of hearing. I don’t think so, as he thought this ten years ago and I had a hearing check at that time and everything was fine.

What I do have is “spousal blockage”. My husband is a nonstop, stream-of-consciousness talker, and in order to retain my sanity, I’ve learned to block him out. The trouble is that there are sometimes some important communications mixed in with all the thinking out loud, and those get blocked out, too. It gradually seeps through that he has said something significant, and that’s when I say “What?” His response is “You’re not listening to me, as usual!”

Well, duh.

28

This is something that gets me. I have to speak on the phone all day. Phone connections, as it is, are very poor quality, so when I’m speaking on the phone, I generally enunciate very carefully, pronouncing every syllable and consonant clearly. But very often, the person at the other end is just muttering away, not changing anything while I’m asking for clearer communication. Are some people just unable to switch from casual to formal, careful enunciation? (I’m not talking about people for whom English is a second language and they might have trouble with certain English sounds.)

29

Yeah. I’m rather hard of hearing but not so much that I can’t tell that two different sentences are different from one another.

One thing that really bugs me is when I need to ask someone to repeat themselves and when they do they change the wording. For example they say:

“The car will be here very soon.”

I ask them to repeat it and then they say:

“Your ride is arriving any minute now.”

Drive me crazy! For a number of reasons I need to know the exact phrase they first said, not something else. For one thing, I probably understood most of what they said and need it repeated so I can make sure. If they say something else it doesn’t work. Also, I don’t want a rephrasing which may convey a slightly different meaning. I want the original.

I understand why folks might do that. It’s common behavior if one believes that you didn’t understand what they meant–not that they didn’t hear it.

30

I kind of have this with my mom. She’s got no internal monologue at all, so it’s an endless stream of chatter. She’ll enter a room already talking. It eventually becomes white noise, and I’ve had to learn to just pay enough attention to spot if something important pops out.

31

With me, it’s not so much that I’m “not paying attention”, it’s that I’m usually paying attention to something else. So, maybe make sure I know you’re going to say something important before you start rattling it off. Start with, “Hey, have you got a minute?”, rather than diving right into the details.

32

Yeah, this. I had one friend who, when we were driving together, would, more often than not, turn away from me (towards the side window of the car, that is), and then half-mumble something, and expect me to hear it perfectly.

All this despite the multitude of times I told him flat out that I couldn’t understand a goddamned word he said when he did that.

Drove me nuts, and him as well, since it meant he had to speak twice as often as he needed to, because he’d had to repeat everything he’d said so I’d hear it properly.

33

Yes, this is hard for me, too. If it’s a difficult hearing environment, then I may have just gotten a few words from two different sentences, which may not help me decode the meaning.

Also, it’s difficult when people assume you only missed part of the sentence.

So:

A: Your car will be here very soon.
Me: Pardon?
A: very soon.
Me: I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.
A: VERY SOON!
Me: ?? What’s very soon?
A: (annoyed) Your car!

34

I’m very glad to hear this

I went to bed cranky last night over this thread, but now I’m happy again. Thanks!

35

What bothers me are the people who don’t make any allowances for themselves or other people who are hard of hearing. This leads to endless bickering and raised tempers among several older couples I know as neither person can properly hear. “What!?” “Never mind.” “I didn’t hear you!” “I said just forget it!” “What did you forget?” “Leave me alone, I’ll get it myself!”

Like many others, I have trouble when there is background noise, or people don’t speak clearly. I at least try to be clear about the information I’m asking for. Using the above example:

I don’t just start going “huh,” but try to say, “who should I call and why?”

After many years I’ve mostly trained my family that if they want me while I’m in the kitchen with the sink on, they have to come and get me. Before I could hear they said something, so I’d stop what I was doing to go and get them to repeat it, just to find out they were talking to the cat or something. Now I just ignore it. If it’s important, they’ll have to come into the room.

I suspect I experience this in reverse with my kid. Her hearing is physically fine, but she definitely has issues getting her thoughts in order. She gives notification, then nothing happens, then gives notification again, and then maybe starts what she’s going to say. I guess I should try it the other way: “Kid. Kid? Hey Kid!” and then start what I need to say.

36

I’ve seen all 3 of these in my life, and find that #2 is the most common reason people need to repeat themselves. It seems to me to be the way the brain processes the sound; the ears send the stimulus to it and that part works correctly, but how the brain filters and interprets varies a lot.

I see this in my kids every day; I get their attention, wait until they are facing me and stop what they were doing before talking, then make a clear statement like “You need to hang up your coat”. They have a habit of looking right at me the whole time, nodding when I’m done, and then saying “what?”

Me: :angry:… “don’t pretend you didn’t hear me”

them: “we need to hang up our coats?”

Me: :rage:… YES!

them: “ok”

Even when you give people all the set up they need, some of them just get in the habit of getting you to repeat things anyway. Sometimes I’ll even see that the person has already decided they’re going to have me repeat my sentence before I’ve even finished saying it; that they’re actively tuning my words out in real time. They’ll glance slightly to one side, adopt a bored expression, take a breath, and wait with their mouths half open for the sound to stop before saying some version of “what/huh/repeat?”

#3 is less common but certainly does exist. Here’s one of Joe Pesci’s characters doing it:

37

I’ve known a few people with genuine hearing loss and I am happy to repeat for them as necessary. Mom was hitting menopause about the time I was hitting puberty, so we locked horns at times.

I remember one day she and I were home. I did a sort of experiment: she was five feet away, looking at me already and I spoke calmly, clearly, slowly enough, loudly enough. I said, “I’m going to watch TV” or whatever—not a complex message. She paused then said, “Huh?” It was her way of insisting that we play the game, I guess.

So I pretty much avoided talking to her when I was a teen. Sometimes I had to ask for something like borrowing the car, though, so it couldn’t totally be avoided.

I mentioned the co-worker…I don’t think he was trying to irritate me. I do think some people are kind of lazy or something. I’ve wondered at times if there’s a kind of pecking order, like subconsciously the other person isn’t important enough to listen to. Or maybe they’re totally engrossed in their thoughts, can’t break out of that mindset easily.

38

I seem to have some hearing loss in my right ear. It’s gotten to the point where it annoys me, because I’ve started consciously taking calls on my left side to improve the sound quality. I really need to get it checked out.

So, relating to the OP, I may not hear something clearly because somebody said it on my right side, so I may ask them to repeat but first turn my left ear to them, so I can then hear it. I notice that I’ve had to do this when whispering with somebody - it’s not going to work if they whisper into my right ear, so I need to present my left ear if we are going to have a private conversation. They may say something in the same tone, but I may only hear it the second time because I’ve turned properly in their direction.

39

My wife has a “congenitally” quiet voice. At most restaurants, concerts, or other similarly loud gatherings, she won’t bother trying to talk with people. She’ll actually text somebody three feet away if need be :wink:

I, OTOH, have some pipes. Was once on the radio and did voice work for a few commercials.

My grandfather was in his 90’s and pretty well deaf despite hearing aids bilaterally.

But he could always hear my wife and struggled mightily to hear me (we had a great relationship and loved to chat, so … no subtle message being sent there <grin>). My grandmother (his wife) really struggled to make him hear her, too.

So … yeah … for some people, some sounds or voices are simply easier to hear than others.

And my wife habitually talks to me from the other room, the other floor in the house, etc., all while facing away. I think my hearing is above average, but it’s a struggle to make that part work.

Given another quarter of a century together, I think we’ll get this one dialed in :wink:

Irrelevant joke:

“I got a new hearing aid !”

“Really ? What kind is it ?”

[looks at wristwatch] “Oh, it’s about two-thirty.”

[with apologies]

40

Do you not see a possible problem here?

41

The thing about disabilities is that it’s not always about things being 100% impossible. And people tend to assume that if something isn’t 100% impossible, it’s no big deal.

Think of it like going about your day hopping on one foot. It’s not impossible. And if you had to, say, go out to lunch with some of the ladies from the neighborhood for a couple hours and were at all concerned about what they thought of you, you could probably make it look like hopping on one foot was no big deal and not difficult or exhausting at all. You would put some effort into being casual about seeking out places to sit and rest and you’d quietly opt not to get up and get a drink even when you wanted one and you might plan ahead to try to make sure you didn’t need to use the bathroom, especially if it was up a flight of stairs, but nobody except you would know all that. And at the end of it, you would be exhausted and hurting, but you wouldn’t have made anyone uncomfortable and you wouldn’t have people thinking you were weak or old or couldn’t be depended on to do regular things.

And at home, with the people you see every day and can sort of drop the facade with (because it’s exhausting and impossible to keep up 24/7), you’re probably more open about needing a chair sometimes and probably more comfortable asking someone else to grab things for you and possibly not able to disguise all your day-to-day workarounds as well.

It’s something that’s really hard for people to understand, though. Which is why you’ll often hear things like “my co-worker/SIL/cousin/acquaintance/whatever can do X perfectly fine when it suits them, but when I ask them to do something/when it annoys me in some way, they claim it’s because of their disability. Seems awfully convenient to me.”

(That said, I don’t know your mom and I don’t know all people with disabilities. Having a disability doesn’t automatically mean you can’t also be manipulative or lazy or an asshole just like anyone else. It’s just that people tend to make specious assumptions about this kind of thing and it’s hurtful.)