A warm welcome to our new subscribers. 😊
If you’re a Highly Sensitive Person and a parent, I can guarantee that noise comes into play in your life every day — it certainly does for me.
HSP Primer
If you need a primer on noise and Highly Sensitive People (HSP), here’s a quick summary:
About 15% of the population is considered HSP (you can take your own test using the link above).
HSPs absorb others’ energies and therefore tend to get exhausted and/or overwhelmed more than other people.
Noise of any kind greatly affects HSPs. Continuous low-level sounds (like chewing), loud, sudden sounds (like fireworks) and nagging sounds (like people whining or dogs barking) can all be damaging and/or paralyzing.
Noise Affects All Children
However, it’s not just Highly Sensitive people who suffer — noise can effect all realms of development. According to the EPA, noise poses a serious threat to a child’s physical and psychological health, including learning and behavior.
It 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.”
It can impair learning: “The inability to concentrate in a noisy environment can affect a child’s capacity to learn.”
And, it can impair hearing: “Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is a permanent hearing impairment resulting from prolonged exposure to high levels of noise or by sudden high level (impulse) noise.”
What Can We Do?
As you can see, noise is a very serious topic when it comes to learning & development.
Like many issues, research, understanding and communication is key. You might want to converse with your child’s school or daycare teacher about the amount of noise children are subjected to on a daily basis as well as communicating with your child directly (depending on their age) to ask them how you can help.
Some possible immediate solutions for parents include:
Provide earplugs or noise-cancelling headphones at school
Suggest a rest period during the day to reset (where possible)
Offer quiet time after school
Ensure time in nature to reset and relax
Reducing noise in general is absolutely imperative. It’s a multi-faceted issue impacting families, communities, as well as being a global social justice issue.
How do you counteract noise in your life? Have you given it any thought? Any solutions that have worked for you?
Yours in imperfect parenting,
Lisa