Whether you’re hosting the big family Thanksgiving feast or an intimate “friendsgiving” dinner, it’s essential to consider the needs of your guests with hearing loss. For people with hearing loss, environments with lots of background noise and overlapping conversations can be complicated and overstimulating. We’ve compiled some expert tips for hosting people with hearing loss; follow along to make your dinner successful for everyone!
Room Layout
When setting up the dining room (or any other room where you’ll be eating), there are some tricks you can use to make the layout more conducive to conversation and listening.
- Keep it well-lit. People with hearing loss may rely more heavily on visual communication cues and lip reading, so make sure the lights are bright enough that they can clearly see the person they’re speaking with.
- Use a seating chart. Or, at the very least, plan for where your guest(s) with hearing loss will sit. Have them sit far away from anything that creates extra background noise, such as the television or the kitchen. Also, acoustically, it can be beneficial to seat someone with hearing loss with their back to a wall.
- Don’t use tall centerpieces. Similar to the lighting tip above, preserve lines of sight between guests by not erecting tall decorations to enable more holistic nonverbal communication.
- Make a kids’ table. Rowdy children can create a lot of extra noise and be difficult for people with hearing loss. Put some space between the kids and the adults to keep noise levels down at the adult table. Besides, the kids will probably have more fun being all together.
Control Background Noise
If you don’t have hearing loss, you may take background noise for granted. However, for people with hearing loss, it can be distracting or overwhelming, as the auditory processing center struggles to filter out background noise effectively. Here are some measures to consider involving background noise:
- Don’t play loud music. Either turn the volume down to a low setting or turn it off entirely. And, as mentioned above, try to seat your hearing-impaired guests away from the speaker.
- Don’t use kitchen appliances. Prepare food that requires loud appliances, such as a blender or mixer, before guests arrive. Wait to run the dishwasher until after everyone has left.
- Mute the television. For many, TV and Thanksgiving go hand in hand: there’s the Macy’s Day Parade, football or the AKC National Dog Show. You don’t have to turn the TV off if it’s part of your traditions, but try muting the TV and turning on closed captioning instead.
Learn
Knowing more about hearing loss and how it affects someone will arm you with the knowledge needed to create an inclusive environment. We have our Hearing Loss FAQ page as a starting point, but you should also seek out other resources to gain a better understanding of what is easy or difficult to hear with hearing loss and how it affects socializing.
Also, practice active listening and other communication strategies to make communication easier for everyone, not just those with hearing loss. Make a habit of facing the person you’re speaking with directly, maintaining solid eye contact. It’s good practice to speak slowly and clearly, and to not shout, especially when speaking to someone with hearing loss; amplified voices can distort sound and make it harder to understand, not easier.
If you have any questions about hosting a hearing-inclusive Thanksgiving dinner or communication strategies, call our specialists at The House Institute. We want you and your loved ones to have a wonderful holiday dinner together. Happy Thanksgiving!