The Impact of a Noisy World on Our Hearing, Especially for Children

Have you ever stopped to think about how loud our world is getting and wondered what impact it has not only on our ears but also on our children’s hearing?

Imagine this situation: you are cooking in the kitchen, and you have the blender and the dishwasher going. The television is on while the kids are playing on their iPads, listening to music, or playing video games. Your phone rings, you answer it, and you try to turn up the volume to hear the person on the other end, only to discover it is already switched to full.

Argh, some of us don’t have to imagine it because this is what we hear in our homes often. We can help limit noise exposure and, of course, protect our ears! Why wouldn’t we? After all, they are the only ones that we’ll ever get!

How often do you wish you had a magic volume control so that you could turn down the noise?

My children laugh at me when I turn off the radio when we are driving in the car so that I can concentrate on the traffic! We’ve all been there, right?

NOISE ARGGGHHHH!!! We’ve all been there before, and we wish we could have a big control knob on the volume of life! How good would it be to flick that switch when the noise gets a bit too much?

Recent research shows that the amount of noise in a kid’s world can cause stress and make us behave negatively. It makes us less sociable, less helpful, and less approachable if we’re in a noisy setting.

Adverse Health Effects of Noise can pose a serious threat to a child’s physical and psychological health, including learning and behavior. For example, noise can interfere with speech and language. Repeated exposure to noise during critical periods of development may affect a child’s acquisition of speech, language, and language-related skills, such as reading and listening. IMPAIR LEARNING. The inability to concentrate in a noisy environment can affect a child’s capacity to learn. IMPAIR HEARING. Tinnitus, often described as a ringing or buzzing sound in the ear, is a symptom associated with many forms of hearing loss. NIHL is a permanent hearing impairment resulting from prolonged exposure to high levels of noise or sudden, high-level (impulse) noise. Outer Ear Middle Ear Inner Ear Earrum Ear Canal Middle Ear Cavity Hammer (Malleus) Semicircular Canals Eustachian Tube Cochlea Anvil (Incus) Stirrup (Stapes) Disrupt the cardiovascular system. Elevated blood pressure and other cardiovascular ailments can be found in children who are chronically exposed to loud noise. DISRUPT SLEEP. Noise can awaken a child or disrupt his or her sleep patterns