My struggles with communication

I have the biggest dream. I want to build and maintain strong and lasting friendships as independently as most of you do. This has not been easy for me.  Previously, I have had several friends in school who took the immeasurable amount of time to learn how to best communicate and participate in society with me. It took them more than a while to get to know me as we learned the best way to talk to each other. Again and again I have had a barrier that interferes with finding anyone special who I could talk to or become great friends with due to my vision and hearing loss, which also affects the clarity of my speech. When I don’t have an effective way to communicate with people, obstacles suddenly appear which can make many people feel overwhelmed and they, consequently, don’t get a chance to speak to me.  And this can make me feel frustrated or lonely.

I want to explain a little bit about how my hearing works, so you can better understand how to communicate with me.  I have Auditory Neuropathy, which is a rather rare type of hearing loss.  It is a problem with my auditory nerve and not my ears at all, so speech comes in sounding very distorted.  My cochlear implant helps to "synchronize" my hearing and create a clear signal across my nerve so that speech does not sound like static. Because of this, talking louder only makes it harder for me to hear speech.  Consequently, that is often exhausting and doesn’t make the words sound any clearer to me.  In fact, sometimes I may ask you to talk softer but slower.

I want to give you a few suggestions on ways you can communicate with individuals who have hearing and vision loss just like me. Here are some valuable tips which will help us communicate most effectively:

1.  Please tap me on my shoulder if you want to get my attention or talk to me, if I am not already looking at you.

2.  Bend down so that you are making direct eye contact with me and don't move your head while you are talking so that I can see your lip movement because I use lip-reading to help me understand the sounds I don't hear clearly.

3.  Please speak to me about 6 inches from my face and closer to my right side because that is the ear I can hear with due to the placement of my cochlear implant.

4.  Please do the following so we make sure we understand each other:

• Speak slowly and clearly saying two to three words at a time.
• Wait for me to repeat what I heard you say.
• If that is right, then say the next two or three words.
• If it is incorrect, please repeat the entire thing you said, but maybe slower and with more emphasis on each sound or syllable, it is up to you.  Sometimes tapping on my arm with each syllable you say will help too.
• If I still can’t understand then try using simpler/different words.  If there is too much background noise it sometimes helps to tap on my hand with each syllable you say, or take me to a quieter location if possible.
• Again, if I still don’t understand an important word, please tell me you will spell it, then do that one letter at a time, as I repeat back to you what letter you said to make sure it is correct
• or take any electronic device and type the word big enough (45+ size font) so I can see it (or write it on a piece of paper).

Know that the more we talk, the easier it will be for both of us to socialize with each other and it will make a huge difference to me to be able to engage with the world around me. When people take time to learn how to communicate with me, it makes me feel happy because I really enjoy having conversations and having friends.  The list above would be useful for building more relationships and this will hopefully improve my social life.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about me and how we can communicate most effectively because it means so much to me to be able to connect and interact with people.