My son is 8 years old and has recently been diagnosed as ADHD combined type. A fair amount of his hyperactivity is verbal—excess talking (sometimes non-stop), singing, humming—and a lot of it is at high volume. He just does not seem to have an “inside voice,” no matter how many times my husband and I and his teachers remind him. Does anyone have any advice on how to teach him to lower his voice to acceptable levels?
Volume control
My daughter is the same - she talks a lot and is often much louder than called for. When she is excited about something, her volume increases even more. It is just part of who she is. She doesn’t have a hearing problem (we’ve tested).
One day I demonstrated to her what she sounds like to me - talked to her for several minutes IN A VERY LOUD VOICE. Then I told her, that is what she does without realizing it, and that is why I ask her to use her indoor voice. Then I asked her to show me what her indoor voice should sound like - it was still too loud - we practiced some more until she reached a comfortable volume and I pointed out that was how loud she should try to sound.. she then had more of an idea what I was asking for..
Sometimes I wisper (or near wisper) to catch her attention when she is too loud at home.. sometimes I need to make eye contact, tap her on the shoulder first
Anyway, she still tends to be louder than normal more often than other kids are, but she know now how much to lower her volume when I point out that she is way too loud. It took a little while to sink in.
Hope this helps,
Kim
Are you sure he doesn’t have a hearing problem? When my son was in second grade, thanks to a continual rash of ear infections, he had developed a blockage in his ear. Even though the otic (I think that’s the word) nerve was OK, his eardrum couldn’t properly vibrate because of the mucus plug in his ear. It ended up he needed a minor surgery to unplug the ear, and then tubes to keep it from getting plugged when he had an ear infection. The bottom line was he had a 50-75% hearing loss at some frequencies. When he was like that, he did everything loud, just so he could hear himself.
If your son’s hearing has been tested and determined to be OK, one thing you can tryto demonstrate what he is doing is try really hard for a day to do everything at his volume. It may be that he needs to be demonstrated what you’ve been listening to, and if you’re lucky that will drive him crazy enough to stop. (I know, that sounds like a Mrs Piggle-Wiggle type of solution…but for one day, it couldn’t hurt to try.)
Kay