Screaming Kids

My tinnitus is in my right ear. Yesterday my small kids had a fight and one of my younger son, 8 years old, screamed numerous times that ended with those high-pitch shrills. My immediate response is to plug my right ear with my finger but being complacent, as I thought my left ear is normal, I did not plug my left ear (feel stupid now). I was just outside the room where he screamed.

Now I am paranoid as I am worried my left ear will have tinnitus. I tried to observe but could not confirm if there is any tinnitus in my left ear as previously I have only taken note of the right ear and recently it has been pretty mild tinnitus.

 

It is a natural instinct to plug your ear in this scenario and no harm to do so. However the likelihood of your other ear generating tinnitus because of this is extremely unlikely.

You need to decide how you are going to approach your recovery. Too much ear protection can cause/worsen hyperacusis (Sound Sensitivity) and can cause you to focus on your tinnitus to the detriment of your recovery.

If I were you I wouldn't plug my ears at all unless I was in a very loud sound situation. Remember you won't be able to protect yourself from all spontaneous sounds which may present themselves - So no matter how much protection you take loud sounds will catch you out - That is a statistical certainty.

In my opinion to make a good recovery from this condition you need to embrace going back out into the world with an eye on protecting only in scenarios where everyone should be protecting anyway. Plugging our ears constantly causes the tinnitus to spike internally within your head and draws your attention to it which in turn makes it worse. You need to be minimizing your tinnitus awareness as much as you can so that the Cortical Filters in your brain can narrow and tune out the signal for long periods of time.

The only way this scenario is going to get better for you is if you embrace the sound (Practicing not reacting to it) and minimizing your awareness to it where possible. This is the only way you will make steady progress to treating the signal as a neutral stimulus and pushing it into the background. If you continue to protect and fret about the affect that every sound has on your tinnitus you will be on this board for many years to come debating with others in a similar situation.

Like all things in life it is a question of taking a chance and trying to get back into the life you once had not so long ago. It can be achieved - You need to confidence to do it. Life needs to be taken back from tinnitus.

My advice is to chill and regard the noise as nothing but a signal anyone is capable of tuning into. It just so happens that your brain has become aware of this underlying signal and has tuned up the volume on it as it seems important. It is not important. This signal means nothing - It is not relaying any important message to the brain.

You need to stop being afraid of the sound and stop being agitated with it as well. This takes practice but when achieved will lessen the amount of daily time you will notice the noise. It will lessen the distress and ultimately lessen the perceived intensity of the sound.

I am in the same boat as you. I have a 5 year old son who screams a lot when he's playing around the house. I know how it can be unnerving - But be assured these levels of noise are not dangerous to the ear. You hear of peoples tinnitus spiking after noises like this but this is not the norm and you can't live your life basing your potential experiences on the minority of worst case tinnitus scenarios...

Best of luck.

 

Hi RCP1,

Very thankful for your very encouraging advice.

A child scream when playing might be lower than a child scream when he is angry and trying to vent out his anger, what do you think?

That's my worry as my case might be different from yours.

 

I am wondering how many here got spikes from kids screaming and how long did your spike last?

I am hoping no one got permanent spikes.

My t spike is so horrible right now. Midnight almost.

I can't sleep with it this bad. My eyes are starting to really hurt.

:-(

The spike is increasing my anxiety. I haven't had a spike this bad in a while. There was a spike and then an 8 hour delay, it seems and even worse spike now. :-(

 

My son has yelled near my ear pretty damn loud about 5-7 times since the onset of my new tinnitus. Spikes usually last 1-2 days but I think over time it slowly got worse.

 

Thanks for your insight on this.

I know a number of you here have kids. I don't know how you do it. :-(

Although, I did pass a group in a playground area. I don't usually go to this particular park at the time I went there.

Edit: Spikes usually last 1-2 days for me, too, in general. The latest acoustic trauma before this was a week ago, from a brief fire alarm but I put on Peltor muffs after a few seconds. I still got a spike after.

 

My daughter just screamed out the car window at her friend who she spotted in the street last night whilst I was driving home. Although she rolled the window down and leaned out a little, I felt an instant reaction from my ears. When I got home I realised I had the "dentist drill" tinnitus which I had at the start of my current tinnitus journey 3 years ago, and which had gradually subsided over the first six months to a year.

My daughter is 16. I thought "screaming kids" was a thing of the past for me now!

I've occasionally had these spikes before for one reason or another, lasting a day or two normally. But this one seems louder and I'm lying awake at 5 am not sleeping well. What makes me more worried is I'm going to a big sporting event later today where it's going to be loud. I'm going with a friend with a disabled daughter who I promised to look out for whilst he's parking the car etc so it's not something I can get out of. Obviously I'll take earplugs and ear defenders, but I'm worried about spiking my spike.

All this at a time when I had been managing to live with my tinnitus and hyperacusis pretty well. I don't even have any NAC or Magnesium in the house. Are vitamin C and D pills worth chugging in the meantime? Trying to be philosophical about this but I want to do what I can to avoid this leading to long-term damage again.

 

Order NAC and Magnesium from Amazon. You can get them delivered pretty quickly.