Communication Strategies

From the chronicles

When you have hearing loss, it’s important to be persistent

It’s a fact of life—for people with hearing loss, that is—that other people forget. They forget that you have hearing loss, and they forget to communicate in ways that make it easier for you to understand. This even applies to the people that you work and live with on a daily basis. According to psychologist […]

My biggest challenge with hearing loss

I was born with normal hearing. My hearing loss progressed quickly. When I graduated high school, I had profound hearing loss in both ears (i.e., I am deaf). I struggled for years. I am no longer struggling. It’s been a combination of awesome technology and skill development. I want to share what I know about […]

Learning How to Read Lips No. 5

Learning how to lipread is all about restricting the possibilities. This is a shared responsibility. Since communication is a two way street, clear communication is ALWAYS a shared responsibility. As a speaker, I can limit the possibilities when the other person is having difficulty understanding. I can say, “I am talking about my career aspirations,” […]

Tip for Communicating with People who have Hearing Loss | Get Attention First

If you have hearing loss, it’s important to ask people to get your attention before speaking. You might not necessarily know that the other person is speaking to you unless they get your attention. If you miss the first few words, that’s valuable information about the topic that you are missing. If they call your […]

What to do if someone talks too fast (and you have hearing loss)

When you have hearing loss, non-verbal language can be an important way to signal to others that they are talking too fast. My non-verbal language in this short is not so effective. It does not give the other person any information about what they can do to make things better. It’s only 10 seconds — […]

Grandma and granddaughter laughing baking cookies

What NOT to do When Speaking to a Person with Hearing Loss (PWHL)

I created a goofy short video, below, to highlight some “don’ts” when speaking to a person with hearing loss. Despite the goofy tone, I am serious about the suggestions. This is especially true about “Never Mind.” It feels dismissive, and it can hurt. A viable alternative to “Never Mind,” suggested by Word Selector, is “It’s […]

Strategies to hear better

As we get older we have more difficulty hearing in noise. This applies even to people with normal hearing. If hearing becomes more difficult even with normal hearing, there must be something beyond hearing loss that makes hearing in noise harder. We now know what that something is: our brains change as we age. Our […]

Be Direct About Hearing Loss

You may have heard of JR Martinez. He joined the army after high school, and at 19 years old, was deployed to Iraq. The Humvee he was driving hit a land mine, and he was trapped inside the burning vehicle. JR suffered severe burns to over a third of his body. JR was in the […]

Hearing Loss: There Are No Universal Truths

Why are we more likely to believe something if it’s in a bold type face? The answer is in the book, Thinking Fast and Slow, by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman. According to Kahneman, there are many common biases that play a role in shaping our view of people and of situations. Another one is the […]

What? Pardon? Sorry?

Three Times, You’re Out! In a Hearing Strategies class recently, I gave the class some homework. I asked people to observe why and when they wing it (pretend to understand). A week later, when the class re-convened, one of the class members said, “I had no choice. What else could I do? I said […]