Children are constantly exposed to loud noises, between school, home and extracurricular activities. Loud noises can cause irreversible damage to your child’s ears. It is our job as parents to identify what situations require hearing protection to prevent this damage. We offer all sorts of hearing protection, even custom-made options.
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Hi. This is Dr. Amy White, audiologist at Elk Grove Hearing Care. And do you have kids or grandkids in your life that you are worried about? Sure we all do. We have three boys of our own and we are always worried about them in some way or another. Today I’m here to talk to you about the concerns we should all have about their ears.
Children these days are exposed to so much noise. Primarily from headsets they wear when they are watching their favorite shows on the iPad or iPhone, or listening to music on their iPods or any other number of devices. I know that kids love to listen under headphones and with earbuds, but our job as parents and grandparents is to make sure they are doing this in a safe way. Children’s ears are much more susceptible to getting damaged from noise exposure than anyone else. We have to be extra vigilant when it comes to their ears.
A key thing to look at is the level of the volume of what the child is listening to. If your kid is listening to their headset and they are sitting across the couch from you or standing at about a conversational distance from you and you can overhear whatever it is that they are listening to, chances are it is much too loud and can be damaging to their ears. A rule of thumb is to never allow devices to be set at more than half volume and to never allow the kids to listen to that for more than two hours at a time. The reason is that our ears really do get tired and they need a break to recover when they are getting assaulted from too much noise.
Taking our kids to loud events is something else to consider. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve taken our five year old to monster trucks inside an arena and how noisy and loud that is. Unfortunately, many other children are around us without any kind of hearing protection. It amazes me that something us as adults would go to and find we would be more comfortable if we could plug our ears, that we are not actually offering our children hearing protection.
You can find these earplugs or over-the-ear headphones, if your child prefers that. They are very inexpensive. Find them online. At the drugstore. Anywhere is pretty easy to find these. Any situation where we would have to raise our voice to be heard over the noise at a conversational distance indicates that it is likely too noisy and we should be protecting our ears. Of course, as adults we should protect ours, but even more importantly, it is our responsibility to make sure we are protecting theirs.
Think about bands your child may play in at school, think about sporting events and motor sports. Anything like that, you probably should be using hearing protecting.
If you have questions about whether or not your child is doing something to their ears that you should be concerned about, feel free to give us a call. We offer all sorts of hearing protection, even custom ones that can be made to look pretty cool to most kids that may be willing to wear them, especially those picky teens. Give us a call at Elk Grove Hearing Care for more information.