Little rant: Mum refuses to wear hearing aids driving me MAD. Coping strategies pls

[TheWildZebra]

Need a gentle rant about my mother who refuses to wear her hearing aids…

visiting her this weekend. She doesn’t get out that much and has poor hearing. She lost her hearing aids a few months ago (“accidentally” flushed them down the loo), replaced them a few weeks ago and has now “lost” them again.

the whole weekend has just been her asking us to repeat ourselves ; interrupting conversations mid flow because she doesn’t realise other people are talking / what they’re talking about ; changing a topic of conversation mid flow by mis-hearing and going off on a tangent.

it’s just so irritating?? Aspects were funny at first but now it just really grinds my gears because it’s preventable!!

It was a massive battle to get her hearing aids in the first place, and spending time with her was an actual pleasure while she was using them. Now she’s not worn them for several months she’s persuaded herself she doesn’t need them anymore and is really defensive when we point out that it’s really frustrating for other people, and wouldn’t she like to engage normally in conversation.

any tips apart from taking deep breaths and finishing the weekend then letting her get on with it?

In terms of actual strategies, if you can get your DM to try wearing her aids, don't assume that means she'll be able to cope if you take her out somewhere with them. She'll be getting all sorts of noises she hasn't heard in years and that will be stressful.Stick with 1-1 conversations at home to start with, that should give her a lot of the benefit with far fewer downsides.

I can’t offer anything that others haven’t already said but I am sending you positive thoughts anyway. We love our parents but don’t they make it hard for us to help them?

We got one of these for my aunt who was in a nursing home. She wore headphones ( our ear pieces available) and we talked into a box device. She could take part in the conversation.

Thanks for your responses, and as I mentioned to another poster, I have learned from these responses that it’s not as simple and “on/off” hearing. So thank you to you and others who’ve taken the time to explain some of the complexities behind it.

We usually do just socialise at home, so little background noise.

But I still feel frustrated - the issue being the denialism that a hearing aid is needed, all the while the situation worsens and communication has increasing barriers. There are signs that worry me- she’ll ask something (like when did you last see so and so) and then she’ll acknowledge the answer with a nod, but ask the same question again later that afternoon and will deny having had the conversation. It’s less that she forgets things that’s she’s done, it’s retaining information about things that have been spoken about where I don’t know if it’s a hearing loss issue or a memory loss issue, or a combination of the two.

I don’t get it at all. And yes it’s very irritating! Why don’t they want to hear!?

I misplace mine all the time.Very easily done if you take them out when half asleep in a chair or if the batteries go when out and about.
I finally got a new phone that is compatible with my aids but have spent the past week trying to find them.

@Yetone I realise that, but I have mentioned reasons why she may be resistant to doing that. Possibly she finds them uncomfortable, but from what the OP has since said in her later posts, it sounds like cognitive decline issues are part of the problem. If that's the case, it is unlikely that she will be receptive to wearing her hearing aids again.

It’s so difficult isn’t it because you only have their best interests at heart, are wanting to respect their decisions and are recognising that changes like hearing loss may be triggering their own personal memories of family members who may have lost hearing due to age and not wanting to think of themselves that way.

My Dad tried hearing aids but like others have mentioned, they aren’t the perfect solution for everyone. So now we are all learning sign language.

my mother is in her 80s and is very hard of hearing. I have two small children and they just cannot have a conversation with her, which I find very sad. It is almost impossible to communicate with her. She was issued hearing aids but refused to let the audiologist turn the volume up, and she never wears them anyway. It’s infuriating.

My nan had age related hearing loss needed hearing aids for 30 years but nearly never wore them every 10 years she would get new hearing aids, wear them for a month or two, marvel and how much better she can hear but it soon wore off and she stopped wearing them. She managed perfectly well without the hearing aids, she didn't hear everything, you had to speak clearly and repeat yourself so it was quite easy for her to get out of the habit of wearing them - especially when she was living alone.

My dad has work related hearing loss and couldn't have hearing aids until he retired. He loves his hearing aids, he could hear things he had heard in decades such as the tick of indicators in the car. He has them connected to his phone through bluetooth, he's taken up walking since retirement too and now uses it as time for calling everyone. He does however have to take them out sometimes especially if there is background noise and several conversations at once. Christmas day he had to take them out for example as the hearing aids were making it harder for him to follow the conversation.

My dad has lost more of his higher register due to machinery he worked when he was younger. There are pitches of speech that he finds a lot hard to hear. My sister and I in our teens found we could speak higher and faster which meant we could have conversations without him hearing even if he was in the room. On the flip side we found before he had his hearing aids that if we lowered the tone of our voices he could follow the conversation much easier even at the same volume. Speed and clarity can also help so you don't always feel like you are shouting. It all depends of which part of the hearing has been lost.

Yes my mum had hearing loss and now dementia.
It really is a major risk factor, if you tell your mum this she may sort herself out

FIL turns his off or doesn't wear them.

I now don't engage. I really don't care personally; I do object to it impacting his relationship with the DC as they just can't communicate with him.

I think it's very selfish.

I acknowledge I'm not behaving kindly here. Neither is he making an effort with his DC.

Your posts don’t come across as kind at all.

There are people here who despite finding this discussion ableist and upsetting have done their best to describe the experience of being deaf yet your response remains unchanged.

She's a grown woman. You don't humour temper tantrums. You just say "wear your hearing aid mum I am not shouting and saying everything twice" and go out of the room if she screams and shouts.

You don't have to #be kind, she's being a pain in the arse. My grandmother did this too and was close to 100 before she'd finally use a hearing aid.

I am not addressing this post to any particular poster here but I will say the lack of understanding and willingness to perceive deafness as a choice is disappointing.

I am sad to see that no matter how many times people explain that hearing aids do not always work for everyone- and sometimes they don’t work at all - some posters just will not accept it, apparently preferring to believe that some people prefer to be deaf.

Disability awareness has got a long way to go. This thread is a disgrace and if the same level of ignorance and prejudice had been shown to any other disability it would have been pulled.

This

I’ve tried hearing aids and absolutely hate them. They’re painful and irritating. They magnify every sound - I just want them to magnify speech. I have tried … I sometimes use the Apple AirPods Pro as they have a hearing aid function.

i have an older relative I visit and she can hear bugger all. Can’t converse with her at all now really - and she wears her aids.

People are perfectly entitled to be deaf by choice but what is not OK is wanting to be part of the conversation and constantly asking you to repeat things or shout. As I said we got a device for my aunt to hear conversations with headphones. Headphones are not uncomfortable and you can have the device for everyone to speak into. It is suitable to put on a table.Sometimes people who don’t hear and ask you to repeat it have no idea that you have already repeated it several times. Yes sometimes things are painful. My sister lost a lot of her teeth when she was run over. She had to wear false teeth in a removable plate in her mouth. It was very uncomfortable.

Please read my responses to other people’s messages. I think I’ve been very open to listening and courteous about others’ responses. several posters have shared incredibly helpful advice as to different devices that could be more useful, and their own experiences which provides helpful reflection.

What I won’t abide is being told by some rando on the internet, whether sarcastic or not, that my mother obviously doesn’t want to spend time with me and I shouldn’t bother visiting her. If you respond reasonably, like others have, then I’ll respond reasonably with you.

perhaps it is worthwhile also understanding the meaning of “frustration”: the vein in which this thread was started.

I don’t have time for your passive aggression so please save your energy and don’t bother replying. this thread isn’t useful to me anymore so I won’t engage further. I’ve taken on board reasonable responses and it’s given food for thought about different ways to engage on the topic with mum, which is incredibly helpful. Thank you to those who have done so.

You asked the question - you can’t tell people how to reply or not to reply.

My only interest in this thread is to try to make people understand just how ableist and unkind some of these comments have been.

Then surely you can understand the frustration of family members who are trying to help care for someone that simply refuses to help thenselves.
In the case of my mother, she won’t even try out hearing aids, despite the fact that she complained bitterly about my uncle needing them for years, and how frustrating it was having to shout at him repeatedly.

It would be like claiming things are more blurry these days and people and objects had more definition when you were younger.

I think if you look back on the thread you will see a lot of people explaining how hearing aids do not always help. Neither can hearing aids be compared to glasses.

Deafness is a disability though maybe it makes it easier to be unkind to deaf people if you pretend it is not.

In the end my sister and I told my mum we would no longer visit unless she wore her hearing aids. It worked.