My hearing is bad enough that know that this is very alienating. I have avoided people and groups after such experiences.
Dinner Table Syndrome

It makes going out to dinner work, often hard work.

So sorry.

I have some hearing loss, and even with expensive, high-end hearing aids, if the TV is on and my wife is trying to tell me something, one or the other has to stop. Maybe I've just not learned to adjust them properly, but that's what I'm experiencing right now.

The music setting on them, though, is darn good.

I can see that happening with my in-laws. Grandpa works hard at keeping up, while grandma retreats into herself...

I think people don't realize what they are doing when they don't fill the hard of hearing person in on what is going on.
It is easy to damage personal and business relationships.

quote:

I think people don't realize what they are doing when they don't fill the hard of hearing person in on what is going on.

+1

People (far too often) don't stop to think about unintentional exclusion and the impact on the person.

I also think that many people have a hard time recognizing that someone else may not be hearing or understanding the conversation. My husband experiences that a lot because he has a hard time with English. If one person is talking directly to him (and no one else is around), he usually does ok -- probably partly because the other person can more readily notice when Mr SK gets lost or doesn't understand.

But in a fast-moving dinner conversation with 4 or more people, Mr. SK often gets completely left out and few people ever even notice.

I'm so sorry that this has happened to you, CHAS. My dad was also very hard of hearing, and one of the few times I really blew up at my mother was her refusal to acknowledge or accommodate this basic fact. She had background music on in the main room pretty much all the time, and would get angry when my dad couldn't hear her. I've seen the alienation, and it's so easily prevented or at least accommodated if you understand what's going on.

I took a really interesting class as an undergraduate about hearing. There are all sorts of different reasons why people lose their hearing (in my dad's case it was due to his military service), but in most cases the issue becomes separating the signal from the noise. Traditional hearing aids amplified everything, both the signal and the noise, and were next to useless except in a quiet room. Newer hearing aids can be adjusted to drop certain frequencies, or amplify others, and some of the snazzy ones can even automatically adjust on the fly based on sound levels. Results are mixed, but the technology is improving every day.

My dad had one of the earlier versions--he used to joke that he had it specially programmed to drop out the frequency of my mom's voice.

Thank you all.
I am too old and crusty to be in need of sympathy on this matter.
Hoping to help some WTFers from alienating people they need.

quote:

Originally posted by Nina:
My dad had one of the earlier versions--he used to joke that he had it specially programmed to drop out the frequency of my mom's voice.

I read somewhere (and I haven't fact-checked it, so consider this as possibly tongue-in-cheek) that research has shown that men lose their hearing in the frequencies in which women speak.

Just one of God's little punishments for Eve eating that apple....