Julie Raney is a certified and licensed audiologist. She has a B.S. in Communication Sciences and Disorders and a Master’s Degree in Audiology from Idaho State University. She has worked as a clinical audiologist in Colorado since 2005. She specializes in hearing amplification for adults and delivers her services in both English and Sign Language.

Create a Holiday Program

When you’re hosting a virtual family reunion, it’s important to create a schedule. Everyone needs to know what time to arrive, what time the event will be over, and what they need to prepare. If you’re planning to do an activity or ask family members to share, make sure everyone knows ahead of time.

You can even create a fun holiday program and send it to your family before the event. Include the start and end times of the meeting, what activities you’ll be doing, and anything else you’d like the family to know before the reunion.

Do a Test

Do you have family members that haven’t used zoom or any other virtual gathering platform? It’s a good idea to do a test before the big day. You can have a test call with several family members and make sure everyone knows how to log in to the meeting. Then, you can go over the basics like turning on the camera or unmuting the mic. If any family members run into technical issues, they’ll have a chance to resolve them before the family reunion.

Doing this test will also relieve some of the stress your family members might be feeling about having a virtual holiday reunion.

Don’t Abandon Traditions

Does your family have traditions you do every year? Some of these traditions might be hard to do online, but others are easily adapted to the online format. For example, you can ask people to prepare anything they’d like to say, or ask everyone to come with a pen and paper. If your family usually plays games, you can still play some games together like Pictionary or even charades.

Cooking Holiday Meals

You won’t be able to share holiday foods in the same way as last year, so why not make it more fun? If sharing food is a big part of your family traditions, ask each family member to make a special dish. You could pick a type of food or a theme, and turn it into a competition. Each person can share their creation during the call, and even share the recipe.

Helping Everyone Hear

If you have family members with hearing loss, it’s important that you do everything you can to help them hear during the virtual family reunion.

Ask family members to speak one at a time. If more than one person is speaking, it’s very hard to hear what’s being said.
Ask everyone to set up for the call in a brightly lit room. This makes it easy to see facial expressions, see who’s talking, and pick up on nonverbal cues.
Turn off background music. Having holiday music playing in the background will make it harder to follow conversations.
Turn on Closed Captioning. This lets everyone read what’s being said, and keep up with the conversation.
Use a laptop or computer instead of a smartphone. Having a bigger screen makes it easier to see, and keeps the screen stationary.

Gift Ideas for Loved Ones with Hearing Loss

If you have a family member with hearing loss, you can give them a gift that will help them hear. You can even arrange for the gift to arrive before your virtual family reunion so that your loved one can hear during the reunion.

Give the gift of hearing with an assistive listening device. These can connect to the TV, computer, or phone, and send the audio right to the ears. Your loved one can wear headphones to hear all the sounds clearly, or even stream the audio to their hearing aids.

Does your loved one have hearing loss? The best gift you can give them this holiday season is to support them in their journey to better hearing. Contact us today to schedule an appointment for a hearing test!