What To Do If Your Loved One Is Losing Their Hearing

Hearing health is a really important matter, but one that is not talked about anywhere near enough in normal daily life. If you have a loved one who appears to be struggling with their hearing, that can actually be a surprisingly stressful situation to be in, and it’s the kind of situation that you might want to know what to do about. In this post, we are going to discuss what you should do if this is happening to a loved one of yours, including how to communicate and what you should and shouldn’t say. Let’s see what to consider.

Keep Your Calm

Although you might find yourself getting frustrated with the person, it is important that you try not to take out your anger on them. This is necessary, because otherwise they might end up feeling a little upset, and ultimately the situation is not anyone’s fault anyway. So make sure that in conversations with them you are trying to keep as calm as possible. That is going to help a lot, and you’ll be glad that you did so. As, of course, will they. If you lose your temper, it only makes it harder to talk about, which doesn’t help anybody.

Communicate Clearly

You will have to try and communicate more clearly than ever now that they are struggling with their hearing, and there are a few things that you might want to bear in mind here to ensure you are doing it right. Communicating with hearing impaired people can of course be difficult to do, and you’ll have to try and be patient and clear with them the whole way. It can help to turn off background noise wherever possible such as TVs, and to turn to face them when you talk, as well.

Encourage Them To Get Checked

Of course, it’s a good idea not to leave the problem alone, but instead to make sure that they are having their hearing checked as soon as possible as a matter of course. The sooner they get it checked out, the better. You might therefore want to make a point of encouraging them to see the audiologist or their doctor, to arrange for a hearing test. This is the only way to really determine how advanced the hearing loss might be, as well as to get the necessary treatment plan in place too, so it is vital.

Help Them With Their Aids

If they do get treatment, it will likely be in the form of a hearing aid, and you’ll therefore want to think about how you can assist them with this as well. That might be as simple as reminding them to use it, or even helping with the cleaning and storage of the aids too. However you help, it’s probably going to be appreciated, so this is certainly something that you should aim to do. It can make a huge difference to how they feel about their loss of hearing on the whole.