Why can't my Dad hear what I'm saying, but have even the slightest noise awake and scare him?

My Mom has ALZ DZ stage 6 and I have noticed the same with her. After carefully observing her I've come to the conclusion that it is not a hearing problem but a comprehension problem. I've noticed she also has more difficulty finding the correct words when she is trying to express herself. Perhaps the language area of the brain is now being affected by this disease. Frustrating it sure is but I don't think it's correctable. Just another step on the dementia journey. Hate this disease!!

Thanks to all. Jeannegibbs, I think you are spot on. He is 90. He does have hallucinations going on. Dad claims that I was in his room yelling at him at 3am. Trust me, I was fast asleep. Besides, he can't tell time anymore. Other things similar have happened. It's sad for me.

I think what you are dealing with, CarolAnn555, is the dementia, and it hasn't got much to go with Dad's ears.

I recently saw a wonderful Teepa Snow video in which she explains that often what looks to us like hearing loss is really comprehension loss. The sound is received just fine, but decoding it to make sense is impaired. Dad can hear the newspaper hitting the front porch, he can hear the dishwasher, and he can hear your voice. All of those sounds make about as much sense to him -- at least in the cases Teepa Snow is talking about.

Also, his hearing of other sounds might not be as good as you are giving it credit for. He hears something in the night and calls out to you. You assume the only thing he could have heard is that slight bump several rooms away. But he may be routinely "hearing" things that aren't there. The noise might have been part of his dream. He may have suddenly got worried about you, without hearing anything at all.

As others have said, a hearing loss is not an all-or-nothing condition. But in this case I suspect dementia is the problem, not anything going on in the ear.

Windy, maybe there's such a thing as a "HoneyDew" pitch that's especially hard to hear?

No problem making light of my post - it's a nice touch of humor.

Exactly Garden Artist. I can't here my wife half the time, usually because I'm in the basement and she's in the upstairs broom closet try to instruct me, but yes it's the high pitches we men can't hear. She says its selective hearing but yeah, it's the high notes!

Sorry for making light of your post but I couldn't resist.

FF is right; that's what audiologists have told us. Hearing loss can occur at different levels of sound. Sometimes female voices in higher pitched ranges can be harder to hear than female voices in lower ranges, and/or male voices.

Freqflyer, I have some sort of hearing loss that makes it very difficult for me to hear in noisy locations. Restaurants are the WORST! As if they aren't noisy enough, they mostly play loud music. I have also had to quit going to movies because the music is too loud and overshadows the dialog. It is hard for me to pick up on conversations if there is noise in the room.

CarolAnn, that may be the situation you have with your father. I have found that we need to mute or pause the TV when we say anything to Mom. Even then it will have to be repeated several times until she is able to pick out all the words, or at least enough of them. We have had her hearing tested several times with different audiologists and they all agree that hearing aids wouldn't help her. Plus with her type of dementia and her personality, she wouldn't wear them anyway. She won't wear her reading glasses, preferring to just read the headlines or large print booklets.

It's so funny, sometimes after repeating something I said several times, I will just never mind, it wasn't important. And Mom will say back to me "Well, if it wasn't important, why did you say it in the first place?" I could swear that she is playing me like a fiddle at times like that.

But because they are unable to adjust to us, we have to adjust to them. Frustrating as it is. I wouldn't go so far as to say your situation is NORMAL, but it is common.

I forgot to mention, maybe during the day there is more distracting noise in and around the house compared at night when everything is quiet. Like, don't ask me anything if I am standing in front of a running microwave or if I am in the hall near the air intact for the air conditioner. If a TV is on, I find it hard to concentrate on a conversation within the room.

When it comes to hearing loss, people will lose certain tones.... they can't hear a high pitch sound but can hear a deep lower pitch sound.

My Mom has very poor hearing, she hardly can understand even a hello from me on the telephone.... but she can hear my Dad calling out to her TELEPHONE.