There's not much you can do. My dad had been losing his hearing for years before he passed and always refused to get a hearing aid. He would buy cheap "as seen on TV" things that didn't work, so he'd always send them back. He just didn't seem to care about hearing. Or he'd joke that he could hear us, he was just running us out.
I feel like this affected our relationship because we could no longer effectively communicate, especially in the last few years when I moved in with him. Worse, he got really into politics and that's all he ever wanted to talk about. We didn't see eye to eye on most political topics so usually I'd just sit there and play on my phone while he yelled at the TV. Occasionally he'd ask me a question and I would answer him honestly, which just started a fight because he'd immediately get mad and say I didn't know what I was talking about, yada yada. I'd have to practically scream myself hoarse to get him to hear me, and then he'd get mad and say I was "yelling at him." I would tell him I'm not mad or yelling, but I have to talk loud because he can't hear, and then he'd get mad and say yes he could. It was maddening. Then sometimes he would act offended like I didn't ever want to talk to him, and I would try to explain that it was actually physically painful at times to talk to him, and that half the time he didn't want to hear what I had to say anyway, if it wasn't in agreement with his opinion. Of course then he'd tell me I was full of it. There was no winning.
I am still so angry about his refusal to do anything to help his hearing because there was a lot of communication that just never happened. After the last hospital trip before he ended up going into home hospice, a nurse gave him an amplifier. It was just a simple thing that you talk into connected to headphones. Not super convenient because you had to talk directly into it (I don't know if that's the case with everyone, or if his hearing was just exceptionally bad that he couldn't just point it in someone's direction to hear), so you had to be sitting or standing right by him, but it actually helped a lot. I wish we'd had that sooner. When his hearing started to get even worse in hospice we would sometimes write things on a whiteboard. It's so incredibly frustrating, but ultimately it's up to the person with the hearing issues to do something about it. You can't force it, and in my case it didn't seem to help for him to know how difficult it made things on everyone.
I have lived with a man for 40yrs that has been hard of hearing since he was a child. So I can sympathize. I would stop communicating if step-dad is not willing to fix the problem, like hearing aides.
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I feel like this affected our relationship because we could no longer effectively communicate, especially in the last few years when I moved in with him. Worse, he got really into politics and that's all he ever wanted to talk about. We didn't see eye to eye on most political topics so usually I'd just sit there and play on my phone while he yelled at the TV. Occasionally he'd ask me a question and I would answer him honestly, which just started a fight because he'd immediately get mad and say I didn't know what I was talking about, yada yada. I'd have to practically scream myself hoarse to get him to hear me, and then he'd get mad and say I was "yelling at him." I would tell him I'm not mad or yelling, but I have to talk loud because he can't hear, and then he'd get mad and say yes he could. It was maddening. Then sometimes he would act offended like I didn't ever want to talk to him, and I would try to explain that it was actually physically painful at times to talk to him, and that half the time he didn't want to hear what I had to say anyway, if it wasn't in agreement with his opinion. Of course then he'd tell me I was full of it. There was no winning.
I am still so angry about his refusal to do anything to help his hearing because there was a lot of communication that just never happened. After the last hospital trip before he ended up going into home hospice, a nurse gave him an amplifier. It was just a simple thing that you talk into connected to headphones. Not super convenient because you had to talk directly into it (I don't know if that's the case with everyone, or if his hearing was just exceptionally bad that he couldn't just point it in someone's direction to hear), so you had to be sitting or standing right by him, but it actually helped a lot. I wish we'd had that sooner. When his hearing started to get even worse in hospice we would sometimes write things on a whiteboard. It's so incredibly frustrating, but ultimately it's up to the person with the hearing issues to do something about it. You can't force it, and in my case it didn't seem to help for him to know how difficult it made things on everyone.
Have you tried a voice amplifier? My mom loves it.
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