4 ms·

A buddy had a girlfriend who had reduced hearing. I noticed that people would raise their voice and really dumb down when speaking to her, like they were talkin

A buddy had a girlfriend who had reduced hearing. I noticed that people would raise their voice and really dumb down when speaking to her, like they were talking to a senile elderly. It'd happen before she'd said a word, so they clearly saw the hearing aid and assumed. She admitted she disliked wearing the hearing aids, due to such things. But the alternative was not following conversations, which meant she'd get excluded because she missed important information. Gave me a whole new perspective on hearing loss.

tengwar2 2y ago
It does seem to depend on the hearing aids as to whether people can see them. I have NHS hearing aids - made by GN Resound, I think. I really like them, but as they use sound tubes rather than wires to a speaker in the ear canal (the oddly named "receiver in canal"), they are fairly low end. Ok, so that means I have small tubes snaking in to my ears. I still had to tell a cousin four times that yes, I was wearing hearing aids, and no, I hadn't forgotten them. In fact that was how I got my mother to get hearing aids - I told her I'd been wearing them for three years and she had not noticed. As to being excluded: one of my jobs is funeral officiant. Several times I've found the spouse of the deceased being left out of the funeral conversation because of hearing and I've even been told not to bother talking to them because they won't hear. Every time I've found that we can talk perfectly well - it just needed a bit of effort on my part.
AshamedCaptain 2y ago
Maybe it's because I have been wearing aids through all my life, but I see things this way. I don't care much what stigma wearing one carries, considering the alternative is being "that guy" who needs everything repeated twice, and that is a stigma I hate.

4 ms·

A buddy had a girlfriend who had reduced hearing. I noticed that people would raise their voice and really dumb down when speaking to her, like they were talkin

by magicalhippo 2y ago

tengwar2 2y ago
It does seem to depend on the hearing aids as to whether people can see them. I have NHS hearing aids - made by GN Resound, I think. I really like them, but as they use sound tubes rather than wires to a speaker in the ear canal (the oddly named "receiver in canal"), they are fairly low end. Ok, so that means I have small tubes snaking in to my ears. I still had to tell a cousin four times that yes, I was wearing hearing aids, and no, I hadn't forgotten them. In fact that was how I got my mother to get hearing aids - I told her I'd been wearing them for three years and she had not noticed. As to being excluded: one of my jobs is funeral officiant. Several times I've found the spouse of the deceased being left out of the funeral conversation because of hearing and I've even been told not to bother talking to them because they won't hear. Every time I've found that we can talk perfectly well - it just needed a bit of effort on my part.
AshamedCaptain 2y ago
Maybe it's because I have been wearing aids through all my life, but I see things this way. I don't care much what stigma wearing one carries, considering the alternative is being "that guy" who needs everything repeated twice, and that is a stigma I hate.