Hearing Aid Users Mentally Inferior??

I have never know it to be said, but I have experienced the treatment. It only bothers me for a second though, because I am fully aware of my mental capacity as well as my educational background. I refuse to let other peoples ignorance(intentional or non) keep me away from the aide I require.

yes, I’ve heard that fear and it’s associated with any person with a disability that involves speech, hearing, or vision loss. Some people equate these disabilities with cognitive “deficiencies.” They seem to make assumptions about a person’s intellectual capacity. Or they go equally weirdly in the other direction attributing “wondrous” powers of hearing to people with vision loss, or similar fantasies.

Not specifically with hearing aids, no. Never heard of that before until now. But in general, yes.

Hearing aids actually make the disability more visible. So, when people see hearing aids in the ears, they get scared and probably think we’re mentally retarded or something. Also, they start talking really slow like we’re retarded or something. And then when we talk, they’re amazed and say “oh, you’re so bright!”. Geez.

Now, if someone didn’t wear hearing aids, this will make the disability invisible. Then they’ll still think you’re retarded or something because you can’t hear them and can’t reply to them.

At the same time, because I have long hair, my hearing loss is still invisible. Ha. So it doesn’t matter whether I wear hearing aids or not. I’m still being treated as stupid or mentally retarded either way. People get a real shock of their lives when they see how “bright” I am. Ha.

You can’t win either way.

Anyway, I’ve never let that bother me. I wear my hearing aids proudly. Who cares? I need my hearing aids anyway to continue functioning in a hearing world.

EDUCATION is the key. Not a day goes by where I don’t have to teach people about my hearing loss. At least it seems that way. I’ve taught all of my co-workers about how I work, and somehow they’re in awe of me. Go figure. What’s so special about me, anyway? I need to keep teaching them, I guess. Sigh. But teaching others about myself makes me learn more about myself in the process.

Remember, everyone’s different. Everyone’s unique. What works for one doesn’t work for another. People seem to lump us all into categories, which I hate. So we have to keep teaching.

I started wearing aids at 30. I felt so inferrior. I worked in the Data Processing field and traveled for 15 years of the 36 years I was with the company, I’v seen the gestures if a customer called me into their office and I did not hear them call. Once I figured out how to beat this mental block by any of my customer was to know their busineess and our system to prove I was capable of being like any normal hearing person. By proving my knowledge of their needs and solving problems for them the road block was broken and my self esteen grew. My customers depended on me more and more to the point that they would call me for consulting and audit work. It did not happen over night. Over look those who have those thoughts and prove yourself to them. I have seen over the past 28 years that those with handicaps including hearing are verry intelliget because they take nothing for granted and work very hard to prove themself worthy. Joe

I’ve never heard of hearing aids being considered a sign of being “mentally inferior” before, but as a hearing aid wearer myself I can attest to the fact that people with a hearing loss in general are viewed that way. The whole “deaf and dumb” stereotype comes out with people who don’t know you. I think people don’t realize that “dumb” in that sense means “unable to speak” not, mentally incompetent.

All people with a severe or profound hearing loss are perceived this way in the stereotype regardless of whether they wear a hearing aid or not, but the hearing aid makes it more visible. A deaf person with normal speech who wears a hearing aid is likely to be seen that way because the hearing aid makes their deafness visible.

It’s not the hearing aid itself that makes deaf people look mentally incompetent… it’s the hearing loss. When a hearing person talks and you don’t understand them there’s only 3 likely reasons why. 1) You’re a foreign person who doesn’t speak the language. 2) You’re mentally incompetent. 3) You’re deaf. So if you don’t appear to be foreign generally people automatically assume you’re an idiot and don’t even consider deafness as an alternative.

That’s just based on my own observations as a deaf person who wears a hearing aid. It’s just a cross to bear if you’re a deaf person. Personally I don’t care if people think I’m an idiot. I know I’m not and those who make an effort to get to know me will soon realize that themselves.

The ’stigma’ of wearing hearing aids is well established and comes because people may not be able communicate easily with someone who has a hearing loss. In the same way that we may not be able to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak English, we have often associated this lack of communication with stupidity.

However, importantly, in our city the Deaf Society still has etched into the building Deaf and Dumb Society. As a kid I saw this sign and saw deaf people and thought the opposite of Dumb is Smart. Therefore these people must not be smart. What I didn’t realise that in this instance Dumb meant mute. The stigma continues. I wrote an article about it – you might be interested.
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art37345.asp

Yes; I find that many people do think you are inferior (in all ways) when they realize you have a hearing loss or any thing considered a “disability”.

I also find that it doesn’t always matter how hard you work, how smart you are, how good or nice of a person you are or how educated or intelligent you clearly are, if an ignorant person (as in rude, hateful, prejudiced people) want to believe you are beneath them they don’t care about what you are or that you are a human being. They find excuses to justify treating many of us with less respect. Yet, their excuses and reasons are always so ridiculous, hateful and hurtful; all of which defeats their purpose of trying to prove that they are superior to us; they prove they are the so called “inferior ones” due to their behavior alone.

I find that some people (not all) will actually punish some of us who prove we are not as stupid as they want us to be; some may patronize you (not the same as acknowledging, encouraging or even praising accomplishments); some others go the other extreme and totally dismiss your hearing loss (for example, some claim that you talk “too good” to be deaf, which simply translates into: you talk better than they want you to talk; but usually it’s: you talk better than they do despite your hearing loss. No, they can’t handle someone who can’t hear “talking” (orally or signing) better than them. If you are Deaf, some don’t want you to be any smarter than them, especially not being so adept with your hands (sign language) which proves you are adept with your mind as well.

I’ve always worn hearing aids; despite these attitudes that I’ve encountered since I was a child, I always did and I still OPENLY wear my hearing aids. Meaning, I don’t hide them at all; if I want to wear ponytails, I will (which is how I wear my hear most of the time anyways), which of courses “exposes” my hearing aids and “outs” me to the world as being hard of hearing.

Like Jenny previously said, the hearing aids make the hearing loss more visible to others; that is precisely why I like to “show off” mine; so that people who see them should make a logical, common sense connection that they are hearing aids; therefore, I cannot hear or can’t hear well. As a result, when they are armed with this knowledge about me (of my hearing loss), they are expected to communicate with me accordingly. Like Jenny, I’m always “educating” and teaching others about my hearing loss and as much as I can about hearing loss/deafness in general. Yet, I make it clear; we all are individuals with individual hearing losses and needs (some need or want hearing aids, some don’t; some can’t wear hearing aids, etc) but deaf or Deaf, we are all valuable human beings.

Unfortunately some of the slow learners can be the “educators” or some people who teach or administrators who work in schools, including colleges. They assume an hearing aids are miracle workers and don’t alwasy consider or provide any support for such students. Also, I find that so many “dumb” people are those who work in the medical field. I use the strong term “dumb” to single out only those who act as if they never heard of hearing loss despite their medical degrees.

So you see, let no one make you feel inferior (mentally or otherwise) because we have to teach those who need to learn about hearing loss. That means that we are definitely not mentally inferior or inferior in any other way.

Because it takes us longer to process word discrimination people feel we’re dumb or stupid. Oftentimes they won’t even talk directly to us but to the person we’re with as if we aren’t even there. I wear my hearing aid proudly and also a pockettalker to enhance it. We have to say right up front that we have a hearing loss, please look at us and speak slowly and clearly. It gripes me when they advertise hearing aids as so small they’re invisible to the eye. People go for that hype when they need a stronger aid and thus get frustrated when the aid doesn’t help them.

Dear Jenny & LearningASL, i need to educate school teacher of my 8 year old daughter who is going to a normal school class III. Perception that she cant speak and understand and cant listen is a major hinderence in the minds of teachers. as u mention u educate your coworkers etc, please tell me how do u do that>? a worried father, Shahzad

I didn’t used to wear my hearing aids when I was younger (a child) because I didn’t like people asking questions, or commenting on them. Even if they were only trying to be nice. I didn’t enjoy being different.

But as I grew up I realised that I was being very silly and I shouldn’t care what people think. Wearing hearing aids makes such a difference to me so what would be the point in missing out and not wearing them? A lot of people don’t even notice I wear them now, especially as I often wear my hair down and others don’t comment on it when they see one of them and realise.

Noone has ever called me mentally slower because of my deafness, but some of my friends get impatient with me and think I’m being slow if I mishear them or ask questions. I react slower to what people say because I hear it differently to what it was and have to work out what it was based on the context. Some of my teachers were absolutely terrible at adapting to my being partially deaf, I have to watch subtitles and I’m used to doing this at home for the same reason as I just described, (I can often hear the sound because my hearing aids account for my hearing loss but not make out what is being said) and yet I was made to watch western and gangster videos in Media Studies when we studied genre. I could not understand any of what I watched. Sometimes I’d get the characters completely muddled up. Then the teacher would ask me questions afterward and expect me to know – I hated it. So I think my grades have been affected by my hearing in examples like this but I’m not mentally retarded or anything.

Yes, of course I am concerned about appearing mentally inferior. But not because of the aid. It’s when I cannot respond to verbal information! To hearing people, not hearing looks the same as not being smart enough to “get it.” This is excruciating — has cost me jobs, has impacted my social life. I do my best but my best still often looks like stupid. And I am far from stupic.

Jenny — will you tell us more about how you educate your coworkers and others? In what contexts do you address it? What do you say? I think you have the key to this issue. My loss is so severe I feel like I can’t keep addressing it in conversation or I’d be asking “what?” all the time — and that would be very uncomfortable for other people. It would interrupt their train of thought and cause them to avoid me. Or am I wrong? What have you discovered about educating others?

Many times when I was working for Honeywell I was a victium of being treated as a person with a mental disabilty. Not only by co-workers but by the company. It isnt fun and I hope everyone of them some time has the experiness to being treated different they put me thru heke. Now that I have a cochlear ilant I just laugh at them

Learning ASL said it all. I wanted to add, though, that not wearing a hearing aid also brings up negative reactions from other people. Before I got my hearing aids, I found out from colleagues that they thought I was being rude, anti-social, dismissive, or they thought something was ‘wrong’ with me.

All that time, I simply could not hear them. Once they found out that I was hearing impaired, my relationships with them improved 100%.

I do have to remind people that even though I have my hearing aids, I’m not ‘cured’. I still cannot sit in the lunch room with them due to so many conversations going on at once.

I will say that I have been and am treated differently because of my hearing impairment. In spite of my degree, my intellect is constantly challenged. I have to stand up for myself and prove myself all the time.

Mom should never pass up a chance to EDUCATE as opposed to smack the spit out of a rude person like that. Unfortunately one really really wants to smack the spit out of them, but if we do this, then they will never learn. I ran into a situation that took place in DC, where someone who should have known better challenged how I was using my interpreters while she was teaching. She embarassed me in front of the entire group, but I managed to calm myself down, and believe me it was VERY hard to be sweet about it, but I pinned her down for over 15 minutes and Educated her! At the end of it she apologized and I could tell that this time she actually meant it! I worked off the steam later by complaining with friends!

I’ve never heard that one, either. But, I know that, from experience, people with any kind of disability are sometimes treated like that. I have a disability that effects my muscles,and joints. Therefore, effects my speech and people treat me as if I have some sort of mental retardation. When, in fact, I’m highly intellegent. My reading,and comprehention, is at college level.

Hello Shahzad,

I’m so sorry that you and your child are experiencing difficulties with the teachers. Perhaps you can enlist in the help of your child’s audiologist and/or doctor (i.e. ear, nose, throat specialist or your doctor). Ask them to help you to enlighten the teachers about your daughter and her hearing loss. They can do this by explaining the type of hearing loss she has and the difficulties she might encounter in class and any group setting. They may also recommend things that will help assist her (like assitive technology, notetakers, anything that is age appropriate for your child and that will help facilitate the learning process for her and make things smoother for her in the classroom.

I am no expert so I’m hope that others here will share their ideas and their suggestions for you to consider. I will post more if I think of more ideas.

One way that I mean by “educating” others is simply dealing with people as I encounter them. For example, if someone challenges my lack of ability to hear because they claim I “talk too well to have a hearing loss” (I disagree but that’s their opinon) I inform them that regardless of how I talk or sound to them, the fact remains: I’ve always had a hearing loss and one which is progressive. In recent years, I actually struggle to speak at times due to the progressive loss; some words are more difficult for me to pronounce than before. So for someone to argue with me about my speaking and deny my hearing loss is cruel and trust me, I don’t let them get away with it! lol! Not to mention, I hate the disrespectful comparisons that they tend to make: they may also put down those who don’t speak by making an inappropriate comment about them while comparing them to me (they usually say something like: “well, why can’t they talk like you then?”) So either way, some people will be cruel but that doesn’t make it acceptable for them to do that to any of us. They may not learn the lesson but they sure have no excuses once they meet me and I’ve informed them of some things. (smile) And Lord, if I encounter them again, they don’t usually want to be “schooled” by me all over again. lol!

I find it particularly horrible that one of the first places that many hard of hearing, deaf people encounter discrimination is from their schools, teachers and peers. (often starting in grammar school and even continues into college with some).

Thank God that not everyone behaves that way; God bless the people who treat everyone with respect and dignity and recognize that those of us with any degree of hearing loss and deafness are just as intelligent, valuable, talented, etc as anyone else.

However, it is the people who perpetuate the stereotypes, who hold onto generalizations and who relish in ostracizing others, we have to continue to “teach” them the best way we can so hopefully some of them will learn and behave better. The goal is for people to treat us with the respect that we deserve and to recognize that while we can’t hear well or hear at all, we are human beings too.

Shahzad, I wanted to respond to you as soon as I saw your comments. If I can think of some other things that I believe will be helpful, I will post more here for you. Please, keep speaking up for your child; keep giving your child positive reinforcement; children need to know that their parents and families love them as they are and that’s how it should be.

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But you know what? What kind of person treats someone who they think as “mentally inferior” in a mean way? Why would someone who believes another person is less intelligent than they are, be hostile to that person rather than compassionate or simply respectful? In any case, for anyone to look at another as mentally inferior, it still would not justify any nastiness that some people are capable of. Why can’t people mind their business instead of going out of their way to be cruel to anyone they may think is not their mental equal? Instead, why not be more kind and thoughtful instead of mean ignorant? It boggles my mind as to why humans find reasons to be cruel to others.

Shahzad (and others)

I’m sorry; I just remembered 2 things right after I hit that “say it!” button. I knew that would happen. lol!

First, I agree with you all and thanks for sharing your experiences. Lisa #14: I’m glad that I expressed things you felt too; I agree with your comments too.

Here are some things I remembered on how I personally try to “educate” others about my hearing loss:

HEARING AIDS: nope! they don’t guarantee that a person will hear everything and many people mistakenly assume that when they see us with hearing aids, that we suddenly can hear everything. I tell them that my hearing aids are not miracle workers; that it depends on a person’s type of hearing loss and how much that hearing aid helps that individual. I remind them that not all hard of hearing people have the same hearing loss; as a result, we, as individuals, have individual wants and needs based on our hearing loss. I let them know that with our hearing aids, some of us will hear better, but still, not everything or even “enough”. I inform them that we may hear things we can’t hear without hearing aids. So many (if not most) hearing aid wearers are not hearing 100% with them.

On the flip side, there are some people who are so oblivious (and they have the nerve to act like we’re the stupid ones!). They will see my hearing aids and still not make a connection to my hearing loss! Not even after I ask for them to repeat. Not even after I explain to them that I can’t hear and need for them to repeat what they said. So those are the people that I tell: “My hearing aids are NOT fashions accessories!” Well, duh, they are obvioulsy hooked behind my ears for a good reason! lol!

LIP READING: I find that many times when people realize that you can lip read they assume you can “hear” or pick up 100% of the conversation. They don’t consider the fact that some of them have lips that are not readable. Not to mention, some people obviously don’t speak clearly (accents or just don’t enunciate properly) and it shows in how they speak (move their mouths) and we often pick that up while we are eyeballing their lips! lol! So, what to do, what to do when you can’t figure out what someone is saying but you wear hearing aids and rely on lip reading the 2 things that causes so many to make no effort in communicating with you properly due to their incorrect assumptions about both things.

It is interesting that it was in my sign language class that I learned that those who lip read only pick up around 30% of what is said (if my memory serves me correctly). That is something to inform others, particularly schools, teachers, etc about so they get a better sense of just how much we miss out.

Let people know what you need whether it’s for them to speak to you directly; to talk louder (and clearer), to sign to you if they know it, to write it down if you prefer.

Whatever is your preference for communication, please let people know. They may not always comply but once you inform them, they are responsible for how they communicate with you and you can remind them that they are responsible for how they communicate with you. If they choose not to communicate with you appropriately, well then you certainly are not the inferior one (mentally or otherwise! (smile.)

Okay, I’ll give you all a little break from me for now. lol (smile) but I swear, if I think of anything else (to vent or to share information) I promise I will be back…….(smile)

Honestly, I’ve been blessed with friends who knew me from early childhood and have watched me lose my hearing over the past 30 years. They have taken the time to learn some sign, speak slower (but not to an exaggerated proportion), and even are kind enough to turn on the CC when I am at their houses. Few people are afforded such luxuries I have now learned.

Do other, “new” people think I’m stupid when I get lost? Well, it’s been the same back when I wore my hearing aids to now that I am beyond that help. Either they think along the lines of “Oh, wow, she’s pretty smart to get along without hearing aids” or “Oh, poor dear!” both of which I hate.

I love the part about speaking difficulties. I have a great deal of trouble speaking–but not because I’m deaf! Because I have my tongue pierced! LOL

I hope we find a way to educate people about making snap judgments. Sad to think they’re that…”dumb.”

I am 67 years old. My hearing started to deteriorate when I was drafted in the Army and sent to Vietnam. Over the years it got a little worse but really went down when I had a stroke at age 54 then I went 70 percent deaf in my left ear.

Some people think a person with hearing loss has “selective hearing” and hears only what they want to so therefore since they can hear “some things” but not others then they are obviously “faking”. I have found that when an angry person who doesn’t know you says something and you don’t hear they may shout “are you deaf” but really means “are you stupid”?

Dennis,

I know what you mean; I’ve had people say that to me and I loudly declared (for anyone else around me to hear it too) “YES, I AM DEAF; THAT’S WHY i WEAR THESE HEARING AIDS IN MY EARS”

Now, if I wanted to be rude and disrespectful like them, I could say” “… Are you blind? Don’t you see these hearing aids in my ears?” But, I don’t disrespect or insult the blind just to make a point to an idiot who thinks having a hearing loss and deafness makes us inferior to them.

Trust me, they feel and look like idiots after I respond to them when they make that comment to me.

Also, about the “selective hearing” I get that too; so when someone with “good” hearing doesn’t hear somehting I ask them why didn’t they hear it? Did they “selectively choose not to hear it or what?” They are usually surprised and totally oblivious as to why I ask (why further makes my point of who the idiot is). My point is: no one is perfect so no one will hear everything 100 percent of the time. Why then is it hard for some people to understand that there are those of us with hearing loss and deafness; if they use common sense, it will be clear that we cannot hear well or hear at all and there is nothing “selective” about it.