Gratitude for Listening Routines
By Marisa DeFrancesco, Educational Audiologist
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Marisa DeFrancesco.Educational Audiologist
Thank goodness for routines!
It can sound boring to have routines in your day and to have a schedule. It feels like you are doing the same thing over and over and there is no time for surprises or to make new decisions. But listening routines with our hearing aids can make our lives much easier and less stressful!
Routines actually help to give us more time to do other things and to feel less stressed about how the day ahead will unfold! As soon as your eyes open in the morning, you are making decisions. By cutting down on decisions, you will get your day off to a better start!
"It can sound boring to have routines in your day... But listening routines with our hearing aids can make our lives much easier and less stressful!"
"It can sound boring to have routines in your day... But listening routines with our hearing aids can make our lives much easier and less stressful!"
Some reasons that we are grateful for routines are:
1) Routines make us more efficient!
You have been told that as soon as you get up in the morning, you should put your hearing aids on. Sometimes it seems easier just to wait until you do other things first. You may end up, though, going to school without your hearing aids and then you have to either call home to have them sent to school or you have to go through a whole school day struggling to hear the teacher and your friends well.
2) Routines reduce stress!
We have had to deal with a lot of stress these past two years. Sometimes it may have seemed easier to let go of wearing your hearing aids all day long. Maybe you felt you could just turn up on the volume on the computer to hear your teacher or maybe you felt you could use closed captions instead. You are actually making it more work for yourself to easily follow lessons and hear your friends. Increasing the volume may make voices louder but not clearer and sometimes closed captioning is not very accurate. Let’s reduce your stress that you already feel for other reasons. Let’s make it less stressful for you to fully participate in school and in conversations with friends and family.
3) Routines reduce our need to plan!
Isn’t nice not to have to think about where your hearing aids are! They are in your ears!
4) Routines create structures in our lives.
5) Routines save time.
6) Routines create good habits and break bad habits.
7) Routines help us to determine what is most important to do during the day.
8) Routines reduce the need for determination and will power.
Those decisions are already made! You are accomplishing your goals without really trying.
9) Routines build self-confidence. I can do this! You’ve got this!
10) Routines help us achieve our goals!
Chances are that you do want to be a good user of your technology. You do want to do your personal best in school, in sports and all the activities that you enjoy. Routines such as wearing your hearing aids all day help you to achieve your goals.
"Routines such as wearing your hearing aids all day help you achieve your goals."
"Routines such as wearing your hearing aids all day help you achieve your goals."
Perhaps it’s hard to achieve the routines around hearing aid use as you are not sure about the importance of your hearing aids. You can talk to your teacher, your parents and your audiologist about this. There is so much we can discuss. We want to listen to your concerns. It’s hard to be committed to routines and hearing aid use if you are not sure about them.
Thank goodness for our routines and for our hearing technology. Perhaps the attached link will help you see your hearing technology in a different way, a grateful way. Please click on the button below to see Ashley Derrington's "Thank you letter to my hearing loss" on Phonak's Hearing Like Me blog.
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