If I ever ask JJ how his day at school was he is not forthcoming with details but if I wait for him to initiate the conversation and then, more importantly, listen to him, he will tell me stuff.
So yesterday he’s in the classroom and everyone was being really loud. His teacher runs a tight ship and I’ve been there when it starts getting a bit noisy and she tells them to be quiet and they do, so I thought a really loud classroom was a bit unusual. I managed to find out later that it was some sort of activity that made them this noisy.
Anyway, the noise was too much for JJ so he started crying. When asked what was wrong he said that it was too noisy for him so the teacher gave him permission to go outside until the noisy activity finished.
Now I nearly choked when he told me this because my sometimes nickname for him is Foghorn due to his loudness. Therefore it was my natural assumption that he would revel in a noisy activity where he had permission to be as loud as possible. But no. He needed quiet.
Even when one of the kids came out to get him he decided that it was still a bit too noisy so waited until it was quieter.
Talk about a boy of paradoxes. He’s the usual noisy one and he’s the one who will turn up the volume on the stereo, but then sometimes he tells me I’ve got the music too loud.
My 5 year old is a bit like that. He can be so loud, but he often finds movies too loud (same here actually) and doesn’t seem to be very comfortable in noisy situations.
I think he gets that from me – I find noisy and busy places stress me out.
Mira is like this. Her volume button is broken and she’s usually shouting but goodness knows the second you are a tad to loud she flips out
Hmmm – you do know that kids cannot hear their own sounds, so that factor is not an issue (to them).
There are lots of kids who get really irritated by excess background noise – poor him – I hope that the rest of his day went well..
This is quite common, actually. Those who are sensitive to sound are also sensory-seekers. (And the tolerance for sound can ebb and flow depending on the person’s mood and the other stimuli present.)