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Oh, the Ear Wax!
Is Your Toddler's Ear Wax a Bad Thing?
By Shannon McKelden
"We discovered our 5-year-old daughter, Shoshana, had problems when she failed a school hearing test and the school nurse said she might have an obstruction," says Sabra Wineteer of Bloomsburg, Pa. "At the doctor's office, he put a hearing test otoscope in one ear and she could hear nothing out of it. He squirted her ear with warm water several times and then dug out a wax plug the size of a marble." Her pediatrician then recommended they use a carbamide peroxide ear wax removal kit on a regular basis.
Chris Ward's daughter was found to have a cerumen impaction when she had ear tubes put in as a toddler. "Her hearing was not as acute as they wanted and she was having a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy, so they decided to put tubes in then just in case," says the Cleveland, Ohio, resident. "Turns out she had a lot of ear wax blocking her ear drum and she had a lot of fluid behind her ears. Once she came out of surgery and her ear cleaning, it was amazing to see her react to sounds she'd tolerated before."
Often impactions can be cleared by a pediatrician or family physician without much difficulty. "Most times, they will put some fluid in the ear (things like salt water – which recently was found to work as well or better than the other fluids), Colace (a stool softener) or many other substances," Dr. Goo says. "They will let that sit, and then irrigate the ear out gently with a syringe, a bulb syringe or sometimes even a water-pik."