Has anyone successfully lobbied a parent to get a hearing aid?

My Dad is getting up there a bit (76) and is losing his hearing, but stubbornly refuses to admit it.

He did suffer from a ruptured eardrum way back when he was a kid, so his hearing has never been really good.  He has always a "good side, and a bad side" so his loss in the good ear is even worse, since he now has a "bad side, and a worse side."

He is still working in the family real estate business, and of course it makes everyone's job slightly more difficult since he misses some things, and you have to speak directly with him pretty slowly and clearly. It is easier for him to converse with men because I assume the deeper voice is easier to pick up, but with some of the ladies in the office, I think he really has trouble.

Any advice is welcome, and is there any hearing aid system that anyone would recommend? Money isn't a big issue for him, but he will not do anything on-line, he will have to go to an actual brick & mortar business.

In reply to NoviceClass :

You just described my dad.  He ended up getting a hearing aid a few years ago.  My mom admits she needs one but she hasn't taken the step yet.  Costco apparently has good deals on them from what she says.

I can not help with the parent thing but Costco sells them at what looked to be a good  price. 

My grandma  (Requiescat in pace) had a hearing problem.  She refused to go to a doctor for years, I mean like 40 years. 

 Said every time one of her friends went to the doctor they found something to operate on and they died within a year.

Finally my dad and sister talked her into going when she was 85.    Turned out her ears were clogged with ear wax.

  Doctor cleaned it out.  Amazing recovery of her hearing.   

Look for local medical schools. Odds are one of them is doing a study or has a study coming up. My mom has used hearing aids for the better part of 30 years. I don't know if it's her ear shape or what, but they have been ludicrously expensive until the last 5 years or so. She found a college doing a study, had to go down two or three times and got to keep the hearing aids which was a big help. 

No help for actually convincing someone to get them though. Refuse to communicate with them using words for a while, go text only. When they get sick of texting or emailing, they'll get the hint, hopefully.

If you figure out how to convince them, I'd like to know.

Dad's is bad.  Years of chainsaws, guns, hot rods, and loud boats have taken their toll.  Mom begs him to get hearing aids, so he tried some of those cheap ones you buy on Amazon and didn't like them, so he figures they all don't work.

Mom's hearing is awful as well, but she doesn't admit it.  At least Dad knows he has trouble.

It is really fun watching the two of them being old and misinterpreting things.

A recent one:

Mom:  Bing, did you take your pills this morning?
Dad:  (long confused pause)  Wills?  
Mom:  Yes, did you take them?
Dad:  (disappears to the basement and retrieves Wills from the safe)
Dad:  Here you go.  What do you need with these?
Mom:  (having forgotten she asked about pills) I have no idea what you're talking about.
Dad:  You just asked me about the Wills
Mom:  No I didn't.
Dad:  What did you ask then?
Mom:  I forget, but we should look over these Wills.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Yep. My FIL lives with us and he needs them too. He went the Amazon route and although he could hear better he didn't like it and won't try anything else. I find myself texting him from 5 feet away so there is no miscommunication. You can see the wheels turning when he hears some of the words, but not all of them and is playing word wheel of fortune with the things he did hear (or thinks he heard) and blanks.

I don't have a lot of room to talk though, 25 years in factories and around cars and equipment hasn't left me with the best hearing. I did get tested though and the Dr. told me that I wasn't a candidate for hearing aids at this point.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

E36 M3, my wife & I have these types of conversations almost daily. 

What?

Maybe his hearing is just selective. 

Sorry, I have nothing constructive to add beyond my mother has been talking about getting them for years. She still hasn't, but she's been talking about it. 

I guess it's better being deaf from birth,  because its harder to lament loosing something you never had. That said, I really should look into Costco aids. I have worn them in about 20 years, simply due to cost. I'll bet the technology improvement in 20 years is amazing.  Not being able to hear and be part of conversations has been a detriment in my life.

If your pop has glasses, use that analogy. 

I've worn them for 30 years now, first set when I was in kindergarten.  The biggest inconvenience in modern ones is that they're still not quite perfect hearing, and you end up deaf again when you need to take them out for swimming.  Nothing about actually wearing the hearing aid is annoying.  If you had them 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, they're wayyyy different.  In particular BTE's no longer spaz out when a droplet of sweat gets within 10 feet of them.

My current set is from Costco.  They have good prices and quality hearing aids, but the service will vary by the individual fitter employed at each store.  The guy at mine is great, but YMMV.  Same goes for licensed audiologists and any doctor, I suppose, if you're not happy get a second opinion/try another fitter.  As for pricing, both of mine were more affordable than a single one from a name brand and they work as well as expected.

Costco does have soundproof rooms and proper testing equipment to evaluate your loss and match the amplification of the hearing aid to your needs, like a 'real' audiologist.  Don't go to a place (friggin miracle ear) without a soundproof room for evaluation.  Obviously random junk from amazon doesn't work.  If you're completely new to this, go pay an actual doctor audiologist for a full evaluation and then go to costco and make sure their evaluation matches...then buy the hearing aids from Costco.  It'll still be cheaper overall.

One thing that I don't care for with modern hearing aids is that many of them have various profiles of how they process and modify what you actually hear, in an attempt to filter out what it thinks you want to hear.  You're going to want to have your audiologist/fitter/whoever enable a setting option for "don't berkeley with it" which is sometimes called a 'music' setting or 'baseline' setting.  For example if I am trying to diagnose a ticking sound in an engine, I don't want the hearing aid to start reducing the volume of the incessant ticking it has decided is background noise so i can better hear the person talking across the shop.  Useful feature but not right now dammit!  I actually use this profile 90% of the time, except occasionally when I want to filter out wind noise or hear a passenger in a convertible with the top down.  My mom also has hearing aids and doesn't have a baseline setting and is too damn stubborn to go back to her audiologist and have it changed, so she ends up not wearing her hearing aids most of the time because she doesn't like the dynamic change in how things can sound.

So hopefully that's some useful advice to someone but as you can see I have no answer on how to get a stubborn old person to do hearing-aid-related things even when they already have one :-/

My FIL is 85 years old and needs to go get checked but won't.  
 

Every response to every question starts with;  EEEEHHHH?

The longer they wait to do it, the less they will be able to hear once (or if) they ever do use them. So if your parents have needed them for over 20 years (for example) then it's probably not going to help much. 

Stop hassling old people...and get off my lawn!  

Easy enough to talk my mom into them. Hard as hell to have her keep them charged and wear them though. She does for family gathering and when appropriate.   

We went to visit a 95 year old lady at our church who knew we were coming over and refused to put in her hearing aids.  

After 5 minutes of screaming the wife and I gave up and had a great hour long conversation with her 65 year old daughter. 

If anyone can convince an elderly parent to get hearing aids I'd like to know how they did it.

Dad retired in '81 after decades working in a metal stamping plant, his hearing was fading then and has gotten progressively worse.

Fast forward to today, in addition to family, about every doctor, nurse, aide etc in the hospital, rehab or assisted living has said how bad his hearing is. I asked if they could subtly suggest he gets a hearing test and hearing aid. He'll have no part of it though.

Thing is, his retiree insurance will cover the hearing exam, they will even go on site to test him. Basic hearing aids are free, step ups are $250/ $500/ and $650 w/ 48 free  batteries/ year. What a deal.

At 98, his answer has been " I'm too old for that". 

Stubborn as hell, but we'll do it his way.

My uncle finally caved and admitted it when he overheard his son telling his wife something. This is how the conversation went from his point of view:

Son: (noises, probably)

Wife: Quiet, Your dad is right here, what are you thinking saying that?

Son: it doesn't matter, he can't hear a thing anyway

He was in the same room as them. He did not hear what was said, but he knew from context that it was something that would have pissed him off, and his son wasn't worried because he knew his dad couldn't hear a damn thing. 
 

3 days later, he had hearing aids. 

My dad has hearing aides. You have to convince them that it is their idea. Good luck! 
 

A few other observations... My dad describes his hearing loss as more of a tone problem rather than volume. Background noise is actually really loud to him. He can't stand background music at restaurants, even when it's some low key jazz that he probably would have listened to at one time. It apparently sounds like crap to him. His usual comment is something like, "Why are they playing that base drum so loud?".  Deep voices and low frequencies are clearer and sound more normal. Women  and little kids tend to sound like Daffy Duck without his hearing aides. The aides clean that up for him a little but not perfect.
 

He is probably due for a new set. His are maybe ten years old. They fit over the ear and take the typical little round batteries. He wants to get a new set that are rechargeable. 
 

Like everyone here has said, you're in the E36 M3ty space of needing to make them think it was their idea, or putting them in the awkward position of being forced to reconcile their loss of sense (ex. couldn't hear a grandchild's play and was later asked questions about it) which could be considered shaming. Fitting them properly will also be difficult because aids aren't just a one-and-done deal, and many of these people (not to rant but...) have this very annoying behavior of finally accepting something needs to be done, and just want to "get over it" to the point where they'll march in and make demands, but won't even give basic info. That behavior is so bad my dentist's office has specific signs about it.

I hope the best for you man, I really do. I see it in my hospital all the time and I can kinda describe how some of my nurses do it, but I don't know well enough yet because I'm reliant on being in EMS uniform and in the sexual and racial majority to talk to some of these people.

Both my parents need hearing aids. My mother because of years at the shooting range, convertibles, loud stereos and louder exhausts; my father from decades operating construction equipment. I find it funny that my mom jumped into hearing aids with both feet. She loves them and their technical advantages now (bluetooth pairing for calls, music, etc) but my dad won't try them if I superglued them in his ears...

Also, has anyone seen waterproof hearing aids? My mother goes water skiing sometimes twice a week and a few times she's forgotten to take them out before jumping in the water...

If anybody comes up with device to cure tinnitus, I'll be first in line.  

What is the ball park figure at Costco?

I sure wish my Dad would entertain th3 thought of getting hearing aids ... we would all benefit from it if he did, to be honest.

In reply to 68TR250 :

We joined Costco and looked at them through the window.The nearest one to us an hour away.  They are closed on Sunday and Monday but will be making an appt going back .