Why Do Children Cover Their Ears?

So today we're going to talk about why do children cover the ears and specifically children who might be on the spectrum. And this is a hallmark for autism children, right? They would go like that and cover the ears. Maybe one hand is covering, the other hand is looking at a phone or something. And this in itself is disturbing to a lot of parents. So let's talk about why first and what we can do to alleviate that. Okay? So the first things first is there's something called sensory overload. So everyone sensory profile is different. Your child doesn't need to be on the spectrum in order to be sensitive to noises, right? So a lot of times when children start putting their hands over the ears, it means that they're having a bad time, alright? So everyone has this kind of sensory overload. It's just that a lot of times when we are out and about, we tend to mask it and we cope and we know how to continue with our daily lives despite all these disturbances, right? So for myself, I can only talk about myself sensory wise. I do get a little sensitive about when there are loud noises. In fact, when the volume for me, for my ear to start cracking is lower than a lot of people. So a lot of times I will cover my ears and people might think I'm pretending or whatever, but it really isn't, okay? And that's why I can empathize and think from child's perspective that maybe some noises are too loud for myself. If I go to a church, let's say, and there's a lot of music, music and stuff afterwards, I do get tired, okay? And I do hear from other people reporting the same thing. And it just depends on whether you can cope with it or not or can you get used to it. So now I'm a lot better after some training, right? And let's talk about the other reasons, right? So first of all, sensory overload is a cause. A child might be sensitive to a lot of things, like maybe touch, maybe like lights, sound is only one of them and it also causes frustration, right? So when sensory overload causes frustration, what happens is that when like from behavioral perspective, right, If a child has a sensory overload and they get frustrated and they cover their ears, what happens is that whenever they're frustrated, they will start covering their ears, right? So it becomes something that is conditioned, a behavior that is linked to. I wouldn't say that it's a cause, right. I would say that it's a physiological situation, right? Frustration does bring out these defense mechanisms to protect their sensory so that you need to remember sometimes it's not because it's loud. It's because they're frustrated. And frustration is something that was paired with the sensory overload. Okay. Number three is escaping. So a lot of times when you see a child who doesn't want to work anymore, they will cover the ears and run off. Okay. Sometimes when they call you call their name, they get mad, and then they cover the ears, they get frustrated. So it's two things, right? Number one is frustration. Number two is are they trying to escape from a situation? When they're trying to escape from a situation, it will look like that they are distressed, they're frustrated, and they're using this as a means of telling you that they don't want to hear they had enough. All right? So you have to remember that. Okay, so let's talk about what you can do. I don't know really what you can do, because a lot of parents in the comments would say that, hey, you need to provide solutions. Like, my child is this and that. I wouldn't know, man. Like, I really cannot give you specific comment about your child without seeing your kid. That would be unprofessional and highly immoral of me. Right. It's not ethical to do so. So I hope you understand this. What I can tell you, though, is what I did and what other parents did and hope you can try. That doesn't mean that it will be the same. You will have the same results. So I'll just give. Give you this disclaimer here right now. All right? So the first thing is always to prevent it, right? There's. There are adult cases, adult autism people, not children anymore. They do have these sensory problems and they learn to cope with it with external help. So for instance, they use ear defenders. Right? So ear defenders are like the things that people use in construction sites. They also use earbuds. Now that AirPods has become something that is more acceptable, you can put onto noise cancellation mode. Noise cancellation doesn't really like for sensitive ears like myself. It does feel like there's something blocking. Right. Which is not a good feeling. So you have to test and ask your child. So other than that, can you use like, earplugs? Silicon earplugs are nice. The ones that are molding like a chewing gum. Those are great. Okay, fine. It inside. That's it. But you'll have to change it over and over again. Okay. So these things, you have to start to experiment about what external help you can use. Okay. Other than that, prevention is do not flood your child What I mean by flooding. So a lot of parents think, oh, just because your, your child can, cannot take certain sounds stimuli too much, you decide to train them from. By flooding that sensation, what's going to happen is going to create more frustration with your kid and it's going to actually heighten their defense mechanism. That's where you see a lot of biting, like hitting, running away, screaming happens. You don't want that. You really do not want that. Okay, so what I did, what other parents did, was to introduce these stimuli, slowly increasing the threshold slowly, slowly, slowly. All right? You wouldn't want to do that. So let me give you an example. One of the thresholds that you and I would understand a little bit better is spiciness, right? So you wouldn't want to get the most spicy herb out there or, you know, like, like, like a chili or something and eat it every day. That's just crazy. Start low and slowly move up, okay? Think about that for your kid, all right? There must be something you hate. What would you feel about the person who brings you that thing you hate the most every day to you in order to help you? You will feel not that safe with that person, and that's why you get frustrated and that's why you want to escape. All right? So other than that, what else can we do so we can prevent it? We can slowly increase the threshold. We can also teach the child to cope, right? So what I did before was I would teach a verbal, right? We're talking about maybe primary school, secondary school students. We tell them, if you feel sensory overload, you need to voice it out and tell other people, all right? That's how you stop that from happening to you again. You tell them, hey, I don't feel that comfortable right now, or I need to wash my face. Or you might say something like, excuse me, I just need some fresh air. Whatever it is, use that as a coping mechanism that is socially acceptable. Instead of kicking stuff, instead of starting to be angry, instead of slapping people, There are other ways to get out of a situation, and these usually for language delayed or disordered people, children, they tend to have a bad time. All right, so that's it for today's video. By the way, my name is Ming from agentsofspeech.com and if you haven't, please go to agentsofspeech.com checklist to grab a free list of tools and toys I recommend you getting when you're starting home therapy. So that's it. I'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.