My cousin’s grandmother is 75 years old and lives alone, but because she’s hard of hearing and an extremely deep sleeper, she was having trouble finding a loud alarm clock that will reliably wake her each morning. None of the various buzzing, beeping or ringing alarm clocks that she tried so far worked. Grandma slept through all of them and began missing important doctor appointments as well as her morning exercise class.
“We are both so frustrated that none of these so-called loud alarm clocks woke her up,†my cousin said. “Now I’m beginning to worry that grandma’s inability to hear her alarm clock will mean she can no longer live independently.â€
Someone suggested a “multi-sensory†alarming system that grandma could feel, see and hear. These multi-function extra loud alarm clocks, like the Sonic Boom alarm clocks made by Sonic Alert, bombard slumberers with a combination of quaking bed-shaking, strobing lights and a cacophony of turbo-charged noise!
The vibration comes from a bed shaker that you place under your pillow or mattress that is activated when the alarm goes off. For many deep sleepers and hearing impaired people, feeling a vibration while hearing a loud alarm works well to arouse them.
For visual stimulation, many of these alarm clocks also have flashing red lights that can be set to sync with the vibrating bed shaker and audio alarm. You can choose one like the Sonic Bomb alarm clock with built-in flashing alert lights or a model that allows you to plug in your bedside lamp to make that flash. Grandma liked the model that connected to her table lamp so her whole bedroom “flashes like a discothèque!â€
To address grandma’s hearing loss, these extra loud alarm clocks feature pulsating, booming buzzers that sound like you are sitting in the front row seat at a rock concert! Some models boast a 113 decibel audio alarm — which is louder than a jackhammer – but luckily the volume and tone are adjustable. For people like grandma who are concerned that they won’t hear their phone ringing, Sonic Alert offers a model called the Sonic Boom SB1000 that can be set to alarm and flash whenever the telephone rings.
So, could one of these ear-splittingly loud, vibrating, shaking, flashing alarms pass the “grandma test?†You bet it could! According to my cousin, the multi-sensory loud alarm clock she bought grandma is working like a charm to get her up and out of bed every morning at 7:30 a.m. Grandma is thrilled that she hasn’t missed a single class or appointment, and says that she falls asleep faster too and feels more rested since she no longer worries about oversleeping. And when grandma learned that there are specially-designed versions of these extra loud alarm clocks for teens and college students, she ordered a couple to give as gifts to her grandchildren.
