How HCPs can bring family together, strengthen essential bonds, and boost quality of life through healthy hearing.

By Brian Taylor, AuD

As hearing care professionals (HCPs), we are acutely aware of the impact that hearing loss has on family dynamics. During large family gatherings, such as Thanksgiving, weddings, or reunions, multiple generations often come together, leading to a lot of cross conversations, background noises, and shifting acoustics. These environments can be particularly challenging for individuals with hearing loss, and odds are — although not for lack of trying — someone had a hard time enjoying themself because they couldn’t follow everything that was going on.

Statistically speaking, half of grandparents and great-grandparents, those aged 75-plus, experience significant hearing loss. So do about one in 10 parents, adult siblings, aunts, and uncles, aged 55 to 64. In fact, 13% of all Americans 12 and older have some form of hearing loss.

This is a significant problem, because family communication is the bedrock of human relationships and hearing is a critical part of effective communication. In the absence of communication and familial engagement, people who experience hearing loss tend to withdraw, leading to social isolation and an increased risk of physical and mental health problems.

By understanding the dynamics of family interactions and the specific challenges posed by hearing loss, we can better support our patients and their families. Advanced hearing aid technology plays a pivotal role in bridging the communication gap, allowing individuals to participate more fully in family life and fostering stronger, healthier relationships.

Missing What’s Important

As an audiologist, it’s been my experience that families often are the impetus for treating hearing loss — a key source of what we call a “salient event” that prompts an individual to act. It’s not necessarily because a family member (helpfully) suggests, “You should really get your hearing checked” when the TV is extra loud, or a family member keeps asking them to repeat themselves. Rather, it’s usually because the person experiencing hearing loss couldn’t understand something important to them, like a valedictorian address, or a theatrical performance, or a wedding toast, or a simple, earnest description of what a loved one did last summer, offered around the family table.

It’s therefore important to understand that family communication is unique, and that hearing health is about more than amplifying sound. It’s about enhancing that communication through technology.

Increasingly, those who study hearing health have come to believe that accounting for everyday, noisy conditions is as important — if not more — than making things louder.

In other words, it’s not enough just to amplify sound for those with hearing loss; the goal should be to pinpoint and clarify the particular sound family members want to hear so they can remain engaged and healthy. And because the places where people need to hear change constantly (folks move in and out of conversations, ambient noise fluctuates, acoustics vary), hearing in noise is a dynamic challenge.

Family communication is also dynamic. It can be hyper-informal, with starts and stops, shouts and murmurs, points emphasized or trailing off. It sometimes starts in one room then continues from another, as one participant moves about. And often, it’s not linear. Many people talk at once, making it hard for anyone with hearing loss to follow and participate.

Plus, family communication is by nature multi-frequency, with high-pitched voices and low, sonorous ones, based on age and gender. With hearing loss, it’s usually the high frequencies that dissipate first, meaning people struggle especially to communicate with children and female family members.

Supporting Families: The Role of Hearing Care Professionals

In addition to supporting our patients, HCPs play a crucial role in empowering family members with the skills and knowledge to advocate for their loved ones’ hearing health needs. This can include utilizing technology, seeking workplace accommodations, or accessing social support networks. Empowered patients and families experience reduced stigma and improved self-esteem, making them more likely to seek help and utilize available resources, which leads to better overall outcomes.

HCPs can also provide access to professional resources such as support groups on social media (e.g., Hearing Loss Association of America) and smartphone apps (e.g., EarGym) that offer information and training on effective communication strategies. Emphasizing the positive health benefits of improved hearing – such as reduced anxiety and frustration, greater social engagement, and an enhanced quality of life – can motivate family caregivers to prioritize their loved one’s hearing care.

These practices can help HCPs significantly enhance the support network for individuals with hearing loss, ultimately strengthening family bonds and improving quality of life.

Hearing Aids That Understand

Modern hearing technology makes sense of family dynamics. Today’s hearing aids can detect the different sounds in a room, identify and enhance the voices of speakers, and reduce background noise so the patient can focus on what they want to hear. They use advanced processing to split sound into different audio channels, as well as artificial intelligence and sensors to identify people as they enter and exit conversations.

Sophisticated technology platforms like Signia’s Integrated Xperience (IX) process volumes of data in real time in order to enhance conversation as it happens. Specifically, Integrated Xperience knows to boost the volume of active speakers — wherever their voices are coming from — while diminishing ambient noise. That way the patient can follow everything that’s going on and contribute confidently to the conversation.

Experts believe that even the most supportive family members can’t fully understand the challenges faced by those with hearing loss, like how tired it makes them to try and follow a conversation. Or how background noise adds to the struggle. And they agree that communication among family creates the connection needed to overcome their challenges. Healthy hearing through the support of HCPs and modern hearing aid technology helps maintain that communication.

Brian Taylor, AuD, is senior director of Audiology at Signia, a division of WS Audiology.

Photo: WSA