Gatherings. More, and more family gatherings.
It probably feels like you’re meeting or reuniting with every relative you have, every weekend, during the holiday season. The holiday season can be fun (and also challenging) for this reason. Usually, it’s easy to look forward to this yearly catching up. You get to reunite with everyone and see what they’ve been doing!
But when you’re dealing with hearing loss, those family get-togethers might seem a little less welcoming. What’s the reason for this? How will your hearing loss impact you when you’re at family gatherings?
Hearing loss can impede your ability to communicate, and with others’ ability to communicate with you. The resulting experience of alienation can be especially discouraging and distressing around the holidays. Hearing specialists and professionals have formulated some go-to tips that can help make your holidays more pleasant, and more rewarding, when you have hearing loss.
Tips to help you enjoy the holiday season
There’s lots to see during the holidays, lights, food, gifts, and more. But there are not only things to see, but also things to hear: how Uncle Bob lost his third finger (what?!), how Julie is doing in school, how Nancy got promoted, it keeps going.
During holiday get-togethers, use these tips to get through and make more unforgettable memories.
Avoid phone calls – instead, use video calls.
Zoom calls can be a great way to stay in touch with family and friends. That’s especially true if you have hearing loss. If you have hearing loss and you want to connect with loved ones over the holidays, try utilizing video calls instead of traditional phone calls.
When it comes to communicating with hearing loss, phones represent a particular obstacle. It can be very hard to hear the garbled sounding voice at the other end, and that makes what should be a pleasant phone call annoying indeed. You won’t get clearer audio quality from a video call, but you will at least have visual clues to help determine what’s being said. Conversations will have a better flow on video calls because you can read lips and use facial expressions.
Tell people the truth
Hearing loss is incredibly common. It’s important to tell people if you need help. There’s no harm in asking for:
- A quieter place to talk.
- Your family and friends to speak a little slower.
- People to repeat things, but asking that they rephrase too.
People won’t be as likely to become irritated when you ask them to repeat themselves if they know that you have hearing loss. Communication will have a better flow as a result.
Find some quiet spaces for conversing
You will always want to avoid certain topics of conversation during the holidays. So, you’re strategic, you don’t just mention sensitive subjects about people, you wait for those individuals to mention it. When you’re dealing with hearing loss, this goes double, only instead of avoiding certain topics of conversation, you should cautiously steer clear of specific areas in a home which make hearing conversations more difficult.
Here’s how to handle it:
- Try to sit with a wall behind you. That way, there’ll be less background interference for you to have to filter through.
- You’re seeking spaces with less commotion. This will put you in a stronger position to read lips more effectively.
- There will be quieter spots in the home where you have conversations. Perhaps that means sneaking away from the noisy television or excusing yourself from locations of overlapping conversations.
- Try to find brightly lit places for this same reason. If there isn’t adequate light, you won’t be capable of picking up on context clues or read lips.
So what if you’re in the noisy kitchen, filling up your mug of hot chocolate, and your niece begins talking to you? In cases like this, there are a couple of things you can do:
- Quietly direct your niece to a spot that has less happening. Be sure to explain that’s what you’re doing.
- Ask your niece to continue the conversation somewhere where it’s a bit quieter.
- 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 how about less obvious effects of hearing loss on holiday plans? You know, the ones you don’t see coming?
Lots of people fly around during the holidays, it’s especially important for families that are fairly spread out. When you fly, it’s essential to understand all the instructions and communication coming from the flight crew. So you need to be sure to let them know about your hearing loss. In this way, the flight crew can give you visual instructions if necessary. 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 may find yourself growing more fatigued or exhausted than you once did. As a result, it’s important to take regular breaks. This will give your ears, and, perhaps more significantly, your brain, some time to catch a breath.
Invest in some hearing aids
How does hearing loss affect relationships? Well, as should be clear by now, in many ways!
One of the greatest advantages of hearing aids is that they will make nearly every interaction with your family during the holidays smoother and more rewarding. And, the greatest part, you won’t have to continue to ask people to repeat themselves.
Hearing aids will allow you to reconnect with your family, in other words.
Keep in mind that it could take you a bit of time to become accustomed to your hearing aids. So it’s advisable that you pick them up well in advance of your holiday plans. Of course, everyone’s experience will be different. But we can help you with the timing.
You can get help navigating the holidays
When you have hearing loss, sometimes, it can feel like no one can relate to what you’re going through, and that you have to do it all alone. In this way, it’s kind of like hearing loss affects your personality. But you aren’t alone. You can navigate many of the challenges with our help.
Holidays can be tough enough even under normal circumstances and you don’t want hearing loss to make it even harder. With the correct approach, you can look forward to seeing, and hearing, your family around this time of year.