These habits can damage your baby\’s hearing. Maybe your family members do them every day.

Last weekend, I took my classmate Zhe to attend my aunt’s wedding. Zhe’s father was at the scene to help greet the guests, and I played with classmate Zhe and the children of my relatives. Everyone can imagine the excitement at the wedding scene. It is no exaggeration to say that communication basically relies on shouting. Amidst the commotion, I noticed an old man holding a baby at the next table chatting with an acquaintance. Even though they were separated by a whole table, I could still hear their voices clearly. The baby was estimated to be only three or four months old. He was lying on the old man\’s shoulder. The distance between the old man\’s mouth and the baby\’s ear was less than ten centimeters. My heart immediately clenched, and after a moment\’s thought, I realized how loud the old man\’s words must be in the baby\’s ears. This is not unfounded. The hearing organs of babies under 3 years old are not fully developed. Excessive sound stimulation can damage their immature hearing organs, and the damage is often irreversible. It is not an alarmist statement that noise affects the baby\’s hearing. When I gave birth to my classmate Zhe, there was a mother in the same ward whose baby failed the hearing screening and needed to be reexamined. I clearly remember that when she called her family, she choked and said: \”The sound of the machines in the factory must be too loud, which affects the child\’s hearing. I was too careless. I should have applied for a job transfer after I became pregnant…\” Although I moved in The mother was discharged from the hospital the same day she was admitted to the ward. It was just a one-time acquaintance, and I don’t know what the results of her baby’s hearing test were later, but I will always remember her words. It was also from that time that I learned that \”environmental noise can damage children\’s hearing\” is by no means alarmist. The American Association for Advancing Science has made it clear that high-decibel noise can damage the hearing organs of fetuses. The results obtained by several pediatric experts in Canada in an epidemiological study have also confirmed that fetuses exposed to strong noises above 85 decibels for a long time have lost their hearing acuity before birth. Although they are not completely deaf, they The sensitivity to sound is much lower than that of children who live in quiet conditions. What is the concept of 85 decibels? Let\’s put it this way, the sound emitted by a heavy truck while driving is about 90 decibels. To understand how noise damages babies\’ hearing, we need to first learn about how the ears hear sounds. Our ears are composed of three parts: the outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear. The \”ears\” we can see on both sides of the head are just the outer ears, and the other parts are inside the head. As you can clearly see from the picture, the middle ear includes the tympanic membrane, tympanic cavity, Eustachian tube, ossicles and other parts. The inner ear is located inside the tympanum and is a complex curved tube cavity divided into the semicircular canals, vestibule and cochlea. Sound is collected in the form of sound waves by the outer ear, amplified by the middle ear, and transmitted to the inner ear. The inner ear converts the incoming sound wave energy into electrical signals. The electrical signals are transmitted to the auditory center of the human cerebral cortex through the auditory nerve fibers. The auditory center receives this electrical signal and produces an auditory response, which is what we call \”hearing the sound.\” . The fetal cochlea begins to grow and develop from the 20th week of pregnancy, and continues to develop for more than 30 days after the baby is born. The developing cochlea is very susceptible to noise damage, so generally speaking, after 20 weeks of pregnancy, Try to avoid going to places with high sound decibels, such as cinemas and discotheques. This doesn’t mean that going to the movies once in a while will affect your stomach.During the baby\’s cochlear development, noise damage to the hearing organ is a long-term process. In other words, occasional noise (as long as it does not exceed 100 decibels) may not necessarily damage the fetal hearing, but long-term exposure to noise above 80 decibels is very likely. Affects fetal cochlear development. What things in life affect your baby\’s hearing? The aforementioned holding a baby and chatting loudly with others is a very common scene in life. We speak to people one meter away and raise our voices in order to be heard, but we often forget that our babies’ ears are right next to our mouths, receiving the loudest volume when we speak. Plus, there’s time for babies to snuggle up to us and listen to us tell stories. When we read picture books to our babies vividly, it is easy to forget to control the volume. Please remember that the baby\’s ears are right next to our mouth at this time. If the sound is lower, the baby can hear it. Many parents like to take their babies to children\’s playgrounds in shopping malls, which are usually crowded on weekends. The sounds of adults calling their children, children\’s screams of excitement, and the sounds of various electric toys are mixed together, creating very serious environmental noise. That\’s it for older children. If a baby of one or two years old is in such an environment, his ears are going through disaster. When your baby wears headphones to listen to music, the headphones transmit sound waves directly to the baby\’s fragile eardrum. This causes the baby\’s auditory organs to continue to be excited, causing auditory fatigue, which in turn causes spasm of fine blood vessels in the inner ear, reduces blood supply, damages inner ear hair cells, and ultimately damages the auditory organs. When choosing toys, try to avoid high-decibel audio and visual toys. When getting a toy, adults can first place the toy about 30 cm away from their head and listen. If the sound is too noisy for adults, don\’t let your children play with it. Or you can use tape to seal the sound-producing speaker and lower the volume before letting your child play with it. This is why when choosing toys, don’t buy low-quality ones, but try to choose big-brand ones. It doesn’t matter if they are more expensive, but protecting your baby’s health from damage is important. For children under 3 years old, their hearing organs are still developing. Do not take them to movie theaters or game arcades too frequently, as the sounds there are really too loud. In particular, do not often take your baby to watch movies with intense scenes and exciting sound effects. This will not only make the baby\’s hearing organs feel uncomfortable, but also easily stimulate the baby\’s interest in and desire to imitate violent actions. Some of the above-mentioned noise effects only affect and hinder the baby\’s hearing development to a large extent. In our country, 20,000 to 30,000 children become deaf and mute every year due to injections and medicines. Everyone should pay special attention to this. Ototoxic drugs should not be given to children casually. Also, when a baby lies down to feed, milk sometimes flows into the middle ear area, causing otitis media. Therefore, the baby\’s head must be raised when feeding to prevent milk from entering the ear canal. The harm of hearing loss to babies is not limited to hearing. When I returned to my hometown in early September, I heard about such a thing from a neighbor. There is a primary school student in the town. His teacher always reports to his parents that he is absent-minded in class and doesn’t like to communicate with his classmates. Sometimes he doesn’t pay attention to what the teacher talks to him, as if he doesn’t hear him. Parents feel that their children are deliberately causing trouble and hit themI was beaten and scolded, but there was no improvement. It wasn\’t until he entered junior high school that the school organized a physical examination and discovered that the child had hearing problems. The parents were anxious and took their children to a large hospital in the provincial capital for a check-up. The result was that the child\’s hearing was indeed below average. The doctor asked about the child\’s living situation and learned that the child\’s father was engaged in carpentry and there was the sound of electric saws at home all year round. It was initially determined that environmental noise caused the child\’s hearing deterioration. In other words, the child did not deliberately not listen to the teacher and classmates, but he really did not hear them. For children with hearing loss, their language communication ability will be directly affected. This is easy to understand. When children learn to speak, they must first hear and then imitate the sounds. If they cannot hear clearly or are not easy to hear, the probability of making sounds will of course be greatly reduced. The same goes for communicating with others. How can you talk to others if you can\’t hear them clearly? If your child always asks for the sound to be louder when listening to stories or watching TV, but others think the sound is loud enough, then you should be careful about whether your child has a hearing problem. Or there is a sudden abnormal noise around you, and everyone reacts, but the child does not move, you should also observe the reason. You can also try calling the child from behind at a lower volume. If there is no response, gradually increase the volume and observe the child\’s reaction. What can be done to promote baby\’s hearing development? You can usually let your baby listen to more natural sounds in life, such as the sound of walking footsteps, the chirping of birds, the sound of people talking to each other in the distance, as well as the sound of wind, rain, running water, the sound of books moving… etc. wait. You can prepare some small toys with different sounds for your baby, such as rattles with good quality and soft and non-shrill volume, music boxes, rubber toys that make noise when pinched, etc. When holding a baby, you can put the baby\’s head close to our heart, so that the baby can clearly hear the beating of the heart. This gentle and regular sound is very good for promoting the baby\’s hearing. You can usually play some classical music with a soothing rhythm, and you can also guide your baby to distinguish the sounds of different family members talking and walking. TIPS Decibel Identification Chart The impact of different levels of decibels on the ears: 0 to 20 decibels is very quiet, almost imperceptible; 20 to 40 decibels is quiet, like a soft whisper; 40 to 60 decibels is normal, ordinary indoor conversation; 60 to 70 decibels is noisy, with some noise Nerve damage; 70 to 90 decibels is very noisy and nerve cells are damaged; 90 to 100 decibels causes hearing damage; 100 to 120 decibels is unbearable and will cause temporary deafness if left for one minute; and above 120 decibels is total deafness.