Here's Liz Atwood with this week's Tween Tuesday

Don’t you hate it when kids don’t listen? Lately I’m worried more about the kids not hearing. Both of my boys have taken to spending a lot of time with their iPod earbuds stuck in the ears. Part of the reason is they have different tastes in music so when we’re traveling they will listen to their iPods rather than listen to the radio. Another reason seems to be they abhor the sound of silence, so when they are reading or doing their homework they are listening to their iPods. And I’m sure at least one of the reasons they seem to always have cords dangling from their ears is they don’t want to listen to me.

But there is clear evidence that listening to music that is too loud or played for too long can damage one’s hearing. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association last year found that 1 in 5 adolescents has some hearing loss and that listening to portable music players is partly to blame. According to the Hearing Loss Association of America, if you can hear the music while standing next to your child who is listening to a portable music player, he probably has the music turned too loud. Over time, a child suffers hearing loss and will crank the volume even higher.

One rule of thumb is to limit exposure to less than an hour and to keep the music volume so the listener can still hear someone talking three feet away. Now if I can just get my kids to listen so they will still be able to hear.