“Too loud! Too loud, Mommy! This phrase is often heard in our home and accompanied by yelling, crying, and hands held over ears. The same child often loves to create a noise level much higher than the one that bothered him by yelling, banging, and testing the range of his voice. What I’ve learned recently is this behavior is linked to his auditory sensory needs, and I can help him adjust and get those needs met. ” – Bare Feet on the Dashboard
CLICK HERE: Helping Kids Tolerate Loud Noises, Learn Volume Control
Hi Jennifer,
I have been a pediatric occupational therapist for 40 years, starting my first courses in Sensory Integration with Jean Ayres, while in my pediatric internship, 43 years back. In the last 10 years, I have been doing Auditory Integration Training, certified in the Berard Method. I have been very pleased with the outcomes for children as well as adults with sensitive hearing. When tested by the audiologist, these people (adults and children) are usually experiencing peaks of frequencies in the -5 to -15 dBl range, making all sounds falling within those frequencies physically painful when heard. Auditory Integration Training has really helped these folks improve their tolerance of these frequencies by improving functioning of the tympanus and stapedius muscles (located in the middle ear) to function well in dampening these bothersome frequencies. The improvements are usually permanent, rarely requiring more auditory training. Certain medications (ototoxic) and being in loud environments without ear protection or wearing headphones to listen to music (not speech) may, however, require retraining. In the 10 years of doing this training, only a handful have required retraining (for the reasons I mention here).
Mary, Thanks for sharing your insight and additional information!
I neglected to say that wearing ear protection to block out sounds on more than an occaisonal basis, will actually make the hearing even more sensitive, when not wearing these devices, so parents should be careful not to permit the child to wear the noise dampening headphones except for brief amounts of time and only on an occasional basis.