How to Convince a Loved One to Wear a Hearing Aid

Blow their minds with the cool factor. Devices today are definitely not our parents’ hearing aids. Here are just a few of the nifty high-tech features.

• Bluetooth connection: They can take the place of wireless headsets and earbuds, allowing you to stream sound from your smartphone, laptop or TV directly into your ear.
• Fitness tracking: Some hearing aids can calculate your activity level and number of steps.
• Personal interpreter: With the help of an app, you can translate other languages on your next vacation.
• High-tech house calls: “A lot of hearing aid manufacturers are swinging hard and strong into telehealth,” says Jackie Clark, a clinical audiologist and clinical professor of audiology at the University of Texas at Dallas. “Now your audiologist can adjust your hearing aid’s settings, and you don’t have to go to their office.”
• Fall alert: Hearing aids with sensors can detect falls, then send out a notification to summon help after your nasty spill.

And they’re small: The clunky, conspicuous earwear of decades ago has been replaced by sleek, sophisticated — and discreet — devices.

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Do the math. It’s true that hearing aids don’t come cheap. The average price is about $2,300 per unit (that’s just one device, so double that if you need two), and Medicare won’t pick up the tab. But if you consider cost per wear (the price divided by the number of times you’ll end up wearing your hearing aid), it may seem like more of a bargain. The average life span for hearing aids is five to eight years. Some quick math: A pair of $4,600 hearing aids worn 12 months a year for, say, five years comes out to about $75 a month, or about $2.50 a day. Some manufacturers offer payment plans, and there are other ways to save on the devices.

Make it personal. A hearing problem doesn’t just affect the person who has the impairment: “The whole family is affected because everyone else is trying to adapt,” Clark says. “In fact, some people don’t even have a real perception of their hearing loss. I had one patient who was unaware of the extent of her problem because everyone around her was yelling so she could hear, or turning up the volume on the TV as loud as she wanted. She wasn’t really suffering because everyone else was adapting.” If your loved one is in denial, you might help them understand the extent of their hearing problem by keeping track — with a journal or audiotape — of how many times a day they’ve asked someone to repeat something.

Ride shotgun. Offer to go to the audiologist with your loved one — just to get their hearing checked and see what the doctor has to say. (Authority figures often hold more sway when it comes to persuading people to take action.) “A third-party advocate always helps,” Wynens says. “The more people I can bring into my office to help the patient with hearing loss, the better. It lightens the atmosphere a little bit and takes the pressure off the patient.”

Let her know that she can test-drive a hearing aid. (Yes, you can do that.) This will give her an opportunity to adjust to her device before making a final decision.

Bargain. Reciprocity, as psychologists call it, is a strategy centered around one simple principle: People are prone to returning favors. (Put another way: You do Y for me, I’ll do Z for you.) If your loved one agrees to see an audiologist, promise to respond in kind — say, by finally scheduling that colonoscopy you’ve been putting off for ages.  

Drop some names. Whoopi Goldberg, Jodie Foster, Pete Townshend and former President Bill Clinton are just a few well-known people who have copped to sporting hearing aids. Not bad company to be in, right?

And what if your hearing-impaired loved one still isn’t ready to take action? Back off for a bit. “Ultimately, they have to come to the realization for themselves,” Clark says. “If they’re pressured into buying something before they’re ready, that device is going to end up being an ‘in-the-drawer hearing aid,’ and no one wants that.”