Gatherings. So many family gatherings.
During the holidays, it probably seems like you’re meeting (or re-meeting) a new long-lost relative almost every weekend. The holiday season can be fun (and also challenging) because of this. Usually, it’s easy to look forward to this yearly catching up. You get to learn what everybody’s been doing all year.
But those family gatherings might feel less welcoming when you’re dealing with hearing loss. Why is that? How will your hearing loss impact you when you’re at family gatherings?
Your ability to communicate with others can be greatly effected by hearing loss, and also the ability of others to communicate with you. The resulting feelings of alienation can be particularly disheartening and distressing around the holidays. Hearing specialists and professionals have formulated some go-to tips that can help make your holidays more enjoyable, and more rewarding, when you have hearing loss.
Tips to help you enjoy the holiday season
There’s so much to see during the holidays, lights, food, gifts, and more. But there’s also a lot to hear: how Uncle Bob lost his third finger (what?!), how school is going for Julie, how Nancy got a promotion, it keeps going.
These tips are developed to help be certain that you keep experiencing all of those moments of reconnection during the course of holiday get-togethers.
Use video chat instead of phone calls
Zoom calls can be a great way to stay in touch with family and friends. If you have hearing loss, this is particularly true. If you have hearing loss and you want to connect with loved ones during the holidays, try using video calls instead of traditional phone calls.
Phones represent a difficult conundrum when it comes to hearing loss and communication difficulties. The voice that comes through the phone speaker can sound muffled and difficult to understand, and that makes what should be a pleasant phone call annoying indeed. With a video call, the audio quality won’t necessarily get better, but you’ll have a lot more information to help you communicate. From body language to facial expressions, video calls offer additional context, and that will help the conversation flow better.
Tell people the truth
It’s not uncommon for people to have hearing loss. If you need help, it’s essential to communicate that! There’s no harm in asking for:
- Conversations to happen in quieter areas of the get-together (more on this in a bit).
- People to repeat what they said, but requesting that they rephrase as well.
- Your friends and family to talk a little slower.
People won’t be as likely to become aggravated when you ask them to repeat themselves if they understand that you have hearing loss. As a result, communication has a tendency to flow a bit easier.
Find some quiet spaces for talking
Throughout the holidays, there are always subjects of conversation you want to avoid. So, you’re strategic, you don’t just bring up touchy subjects about people, you wait for those people to bring it up. When you have hearing loss, this even more important, only instead of scooting around certain topics of conversation, you should carefully steer clear of specific places in a home which make hearing conversations more difficult.
Handle it like this:
- When you choose a place to sit, try to put a back to a wall. That way, there’ll be less background noise for you to have to filter through.
- You’re looking for areas with less commotion. This’ll make it easier to focus on the lips of the people speaking with you (and help you lip read as a result).
- Attempt to find brightly lit spots for this same reason. If there isn’t sufficient light, you won’t be capable of picking up on contextual clues or read lips.
- Try to pick an area of the gathering that’s a little quieter. That could mean removing yourself from overlapping conversations or getting a bit further away from that loud sporting event on the TV.
Alright, alright, but what if your niece begins talking to you in the loud kitchen, where you’re topping off your mug with hot chocolate? In situations like this, there are a couple of things you can do:
- Suggest that you and your niece go someplace quieter to chat.
- Quietly direct your niece to a spot that has less happening. Be certain to explain that’s what you’re doing.
- You can politely ask the host, if there’s music playing, to reduce the volume so you can hear what your niece is saying.
Speak to the flight crew
So, you’re thinking: what are the impacts of hearing loss at family gatherings that aren’t as obvious? Like the ones that catch you by surprise.
Lots of people go on planes during the holidays, it’s particularly essential for families that are pretty spread out. When you fly, it’s important to comprehend all the instructions and communication coming from the flight crew. Which is why it’s extra important to tell the flight crew that you have problems hearing or experience hearing loss. This way, if necessary, the flight crew can take extra care to give you extra visual guidelines. It’s essential that you don’t miss anything when flying!
Take breaks
It can be a lot of work trying to communicate with hearing loss. You will often find yourself exhausted more frequently than you used to. This means that it’s essential to take frequent breaks. This will give your ears, and, perhaps more importantly, your brain, some time to catch a breath.
Get some hearing aids
How are relationships affected by hearing loss? Hearing loss has a considerable affect on relationships.
One of the greatest benefits of hearing aids is that they will make nearly every interaction with your family over the holidays easier and more satisfying. And, the greatest part, you won’t have to keep asking people to repeat what they said.
Hearing aids will allow you to reconnect with your family, in other words.
It could take some time to adjust to your new hearing aids. So it’s recommended that you pick them up well in advance of your holiday plans. Naturally, everyone’s experience will differ. But we can help you with the timing.
You don’t have to navigate the holidays alone
It can seem as if you’re alone sometimes, and that nobody can relate to what you’re dealing with when you have hearing loss. It’s like hearing loss is impacting your personality in this way. But you’re not alone. You can get through many of the challenges with our help.
The holidays don’t have to be a time of worry or nervousness (that is, any more than they normally are). During this holiday season, you can look forward to seeing, and hearing your friends and family. All you need is the right approach.
