Common sounds like hand dryers, vacuums, and fire alarms trigger anxiety in many children. Learn practical fixes: cover sensors on toilets, vacuum when they're not home, use headphones. Gradual exposure and recorded sound practice can help kids build tolerance.
Hi, welcome to day 16. We are going to talk about the environmental triggers of sounds. And these besides lighting there, that's the, the top, the other top thing that the kids are reacting to in the environment and some of the things you can do something about and, and some you'll just have to, where you know, the kids will have to get used to wearing some kind of ear protection. The most common ones that we see are the automatic toilet FL flushers. And you can, you can take a little sticky note and you can put it over the sensor. And especially when they aren't expecting it, especially if they're sitting on it, totally freaks them out. So you can cover up the sensor, the hand dryers. You can just be sure to not walk right next to the hand dryer because it has a sensor and that that's really loud. There was a video that I saw, wish I remembered where I saw this exactly. But it was a girl that did, did a study for her science project. She was probably about 10 years old and she did it on the decibels of these different hand dryers and how they were actually damaging to children's here to their hearing. So that's very interesting. Some other big triggers are vacuums and blenders and then of course sirens, fire alarms, all that kind of thing. So there's a few, a few different things you can do and we'll talk about it more in depth and how to get them in the tools. But just in general, kids will usually not just right off the bat, start wearing headphones and you can train them to do it just by taking turns and doing it a little bit at a time. And you just want to take into consideration their sensitivities. So for example, if you're going to vacuum, you might just vacuum when they're not there. That might be this the best thing like that. That is. This is a sound that's very, very hard for them to tolerate. I had one, I had one boy who was deathly afraid of fire alarms and he came into my, my original clinic in Leavenworth and actually that is where that sign comes, comes from. And that's why it's a little bit Bavarian style looking because we have certain laws in our town of Lenworth that it has to be made of wood and it has to be certain colors and certain fonts and all this stuff. So, so I just have that in my, in my office here. Anyway, so in that clinic I had trying to think what they're called sprinklers, right. But he came in and he's looking around and he's looking for the fire alarm. And I'm like there's in the fire alarm. And he was not convinced. And so we went into the hallway until he found it that he was just so like obsessed with. Is there a chance that I am going to get totally freaked out here because a fire alarm could go off? So he was one that. It took a really, really long time to train him to wear headphones. But once he did it was, was very powerful because he would just walk in and, and just put him on if he wanted to instead of spending all his time looking around to see is there a fire alarm. And another thing that helped him is, is his nanny actually figured this out. They got a fire alarm sound video on YouTube and they would turn it really low and he would, he would like, he would like press play and then he'd run back and then he, he, he would get a little closer and he would turn it off and then they'd play with the volume. But little by little they kind of got him used to. So it wouldn't, wouldn't just immediately just put him into fight or flight. The sounds are. You can just pretty much figure these kids are hearing things a lot, lot more than you can. Another thing that sometimes really gets to them is little sounds. Like the tick tock of if it's like really, really quiet environment. Sometimes they need some white noise. Everybody's different. Just like we're all different. And so it's important to just use your observation skills because a lot of times they cannot articulate what they're experiencing and look for what are those sound triggers and how can you, how can you modify things? I know for me I, I have a hard time sleeping if I'm in a city because I'm not used to all those noises. Friends that come to stay at my house, sometimes they can't fall asleep because, because it's too quiet. I'm up on a mountain. So anyway, hope you found that helpful. Fill out your question, your worksheet and I'll see you in the next video. Aloha.
