Hear for the Holidays

Communication check list especially during the holidays.

1.) Reduce the background noise.
2.) Be at a good listening distance from each other 1 meter to 1.5 meters apart.
3.) Speaking slower is a better approach in communication that speaking louder.
4.) Maintain eye contact. This means that you are facing each other and that your voice is going towards the person that you are talking to, it also allows for some speech reading to take place as well as helping to           interpret body language.
5.) Confirm that the person you are speaking to understood what you said.

The holidays are such a wonderful time of year a time where we spend time with one another enjoying the company of family and friends. It seems like every weekend and sometimes weeknights are filled with get -togethers and parties and yes lots of eating. Even if the Holidays are not quite this busy for all it is a time when we tend to be in and around groups of people socializing. For some this time of year can be difficult and stressful. The group that I speak of are those that suffer from hearing impairments.

The hearing impaired are often torn between their wish to be in and around family and friends and their wish to be nowhere near these difficult listening situations. The Christmas and holiday season is often unavoidable and therefore a time of great difficulty for the hearing impaired. How much fun is it to sit down to a large family dinner and not be able to follow the conversation entirely? How frustrating is it to go to a school Christmas program and find the gym too reverberant to hear the presentation ? How out of control does one feel at that office party where everyone seems to be following and getting the joke when all you can do is smile along to cover up your inability.Those with hearing impairments typically struggle to hear clearly in a background of noise, things might be loud enough but perhaps not clear enough to understand. I know many of my patients that avoid these difficult situations sometimes consciously and other times unconsciously.

 It is discouraging not to feel a part of something. So how do those with the impairment deal with this difficulty. As an Audiologist I would obviously say that you should visit an Audiologist and seek help and advice. For those that have an appropriate hearing loss the use of amplification can be a phenomenal beginning to claiming back this part of your life however there is more to functioning well than that. Using your eyes to hear is a common strategy, watching the persons face that you are communicating with allows one to pick up visual cues. We do a lot of reading intent and intention by visualizing peoples body language. When someone is smiling as they talk they are probably saying something worth smiling about and so on. Our brains also do make a connection sorting out what we hear by correlating it with what we hear. Locating yourself close to and in front of the person you are communicating with also makes a significant difference in picking up clearly the conversation. Another variable that can help is to reduce the background noise whenever possible. If you are trying to have a conversation with the television on you will probably struggle even with normal hearing at times. The reduction in the background noise is a significant factor in speech intelligibility especially when combining that with the other strategies. These are strategies for the hearing impaired but perhaps even more significantly it is important that the friends and family members of those that have the impairment should think outside of themselves and consider just how difficult and frustrating it is for the hearing impaired individual to function in these complex listening environments.

 It is too easy to forget that unseen impairment. If our family member were physically impaired we would often be more considerate and accommodating their needs than those with a hearing impairment. How often I hear my patients tell me of their family that just do not understand how difficult this time of year is for them. While Christmas and the holidays should be a joyous time of celebration  for some it is a time of great struggle. As we consider what nice thing we do for our family during this time of gift giving perhaps giving the gift of better hearing is something to consider.

Take the time to spend some one on one time with that family member in a quiet environment having that conversation that they would otherwise miss in a group, make them feel a apart of the conversation by placing them at a preferential listening spot around the Christmas tree of dinner table, talk to them not around them. More than the gifts we receive at this time of year we most cherish the relationships we have and the time spent together laughing and sharing, communicating.