Contrary to popular belief most parents do remember being young and part of being young is playing the latest music till you know every word of every song. Sadly one of the other parts of being young is that you play the music to loud.
When we were playing loud music that just annoyed our parents and neighbors it didn’t matter to much. Now that every teenager seems to use an ipod or other mp3 player the situation is more serious. Teenagers never think of much beyond the immediate situation and they certainly never worry about ear safety or what damage they could do to their hearing.
As a parent you need to take care of your childs health, teenagers especially can’t be relied on to use common sense so you may need to be persuasive. If you can persuade them to use a stereo with speakers for a few hours a week rather than constantly pushing their ear buds as deeply into their ears as possible.
As well as talking to them about their music, you may want to talk about the damage that can be done to a persons hearing while working around engines. No matter how large or small the engines may be, the continual noise can cause problems.
Many teenage boys will mow lawns for some extra cash during the summer, if they are around a lawn mower engine for even a few hours a day there is every possibility that there will be some hearing damage.
One option that you can offer is for them to wear a pair of protective ear muffs that allow them to listen to music while they work. The difference in using ear muffs that have music piped in rather than their own mp3 player is that the music is around their ears rather than stuffed deep down into the ear cavity. This reduces the long term hearing damage.