Parenting truly is a sensory overload experience. It begins with excruciating pain and relentless exhaustion. The joy of savoring a meal is overshadowed by the frantic task of ensuring your little one eats – resulting in cold, lackluster dinners devoured in haste after the kids are finally asleep. Your once inviting living room transforms into a chaotic landscape dominated by toys, shattering any aesthetic sensibility you may have previously held. Your sense of smell sharpens to dangerously high levels, as you quickly learn to interpret various scents to gauge how urgently you need to pull over in the car. And let’s not even delve into the tactile surprises that come your way – like the unforgettable day my son decided to use the bathtub as his personal toilet. I turned to my partner, aghast, and asked, “Was it at least one big piece?” His grim response was, “Oh, I think all the fecal textures were represented.”
Yet, the most challenging aspect to endure is the relentless noise. Take, for example, our neighborhood park, which features a circular sandbox enclosed by a one-foot concrete wall. My toddler finds immense joy in upending a bucket and dragging it along the top of the wall, managing to capture a mere 29 grains of sand. The sound it produces is akin to nails on a chalkboard, a blend of a scraping fender and a dentist’s drill. Each time he drags that bucket, I instinctively shove my fingers into my ears, interrupting any adult conversation I might be having on the bench. If given the choice, I would prefer to listen to the sound of a wood chipper at work.
When discussing the challenges of parenting, the conversation often revolves around issues like insufficient family leave, sleep deprivation, feeding struggles, bedtime routines, and discipline. While these are all crucial topics, the persistent cacophony of noise goes largely unmentioned. It starts with those midnight cries of infancy and continues with the parade of plastic “musical” gifts that family members love to bestow – instruments that seem to play only “Oh Susannah” on an endless loop. (For a quieter gift option, how about some cash?)
A recent noise battle I’ve been waging involves kitchen chairs. My two-year-old’s favorite game is to create a “train,” which entails pushing the chairs away from the table and lining them up. The resulting screeching noise is a dreadful mix of an off-key trumpet and the sound of a dentist scraping plaque off teeth. I’ve tried affixing felt pads to the chair legs, but they come off easily on our old, worn floor. So, there’s always at least one chair leg dragging along the hardwood, sending me into a flurry of dropped utensils and startled exclamations as my child pushes a chair across the floor. “Gaaahhhhh!” I exclaim. “That is too loud!”
The phrase “that is too loud” escapes my lips perhaps 40 times a day, filling me with guilt. I have two young boys who need to run, shout, and enjoy their childhood. They occasionally create raucous games, pretending to be hyper squirrels or making each other laugh by dragging forks through mashed potatoes, inevitably scraping along the plate.
I have exceptionally sensitive hearing – even bats would envy my auditory abilities. I sometimes wonder if I suffer from hyperacusis, a real condition characterized by heightened sensitivity to specific sounds. Certain frequencies, especially those that combine “scraping” with a high-pitched squeal, can incapacitate me. I’ve learned to carry earplugs with me at all times, whether I’m on public transport or at a concert.
The downside? I despise this aspect of myself. I wish for a quieter world, where my children don’t create new noise thresholds or kick grocery bags just to provoke me. I wish I didn’t feel the need to reprimand them at the dinner table with a sharp “that’s too loud!” My grandmother was so sound-sensitive that I remember tiptoeing around her, fearful of upsetting her by simply moving a chair. I don’t want my kids to feel that they have to walk on eggshells around me; they’re still young, after all, and if they’re sharing joyful moments, I hate to stifle them with my complaints about volume.
Ultimately, this is our reality. We all have quirks to accommodate – like, for instance, dealing with the occasional bathtub mishap. Perhaps there’s a silver lining: my children may very well have promising careers ahead of them – as librarians.
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