Photo credit: Fimb licensed under CC BY 2.0
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
This brief article from U.S. News offers a few basic tips to protect a child’s hearing.
The various health authorities–from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians–offer little guidance for parents but not much. The CDC offers some resources, but I can’t find anything specifically about noise and hearing loss in children on the American Academy of Pediatrics or American Academy of Family Physicians online. This stands in dramatic contrast to the CDC’s sound advice offered about sun exposure, which is mirrored by offerings from the AAP and AAFP.
My advice to parents on protecting their child’s hearing is simple: if it sounds too loud, it IS too loud. Avoid the noise (e.g., don’t take a child to a rock concert or music festival), wear hearing protection (a less desirable choice in my opinion because it teaches the child that risky behaviors are acceptable), or leave if the noise is louder and expected. Parents (and grandparents) will be protecting their own precious hearing, too.
