What are the dangers of picking ears in children?

Many parents like to clean their children's ears because children always say that their ears are itchy. In fact, this phenomenon is healthy. I believe that many parents don’t know this. In the following article, we will introduce it to you.

Don't pick your baby's ears casually

Since children do not have the habit of cleaning their ears, many parents are willing to "help" them. Because the skin of a child's external auditory canal is more delicate and more closely connected to the perichondrium, it has less subcutaneous tissue and poor blood circulation, and parents cannot control the strength well during the entire process, it can easily cause damage to the external auditory canal and infection, leading to furunculosis, inflammation, and ulceration of the external auditory canal, and even cause unbearable ear pain, affecting mouth opening and chewing.

In addition, frequently cleaning children's ears can easily cause the stratum corneum of the skin in the external auditory canal to swell, block hair follicles, and facilitate bacterial growth. Damage to the skin of the external auditory canal and long-term chronic congestion can easily stimulate the secretion of the cerumen glands, resulting in more and more "earwax". Long-term ear picking and chronic stimulation may also induce external auditory canal papilloma.

The eardrum is a very thin membrane, only about 0.1 mm thick, not much thicker than paper. If the child moves around when you are cleaning his ears, the ear spoon may damage the eardrum or auditory bones, causing perforation of the eardrum and affecting the child's hearing. Normally, earwax can be discharged by itself with the help of head movements, chewing food, opening the mouth, etc. If a child has too much or too large earwax or it affects hearing, he or she should go to the hospital for examination.

Some parents often use ear picks or small hairpins to clean their children's ears. In fact, this has many disadvantages and is also very dangerous. Even if your baby's ears are itchy or there is a foreign object in them, you should not handle them without authorization. Otherwise, as in the above example, the baby's eardrum may be damaged and the hearing may be affected when the baby grows up.

How to clean your baby's ears

Earwax is medically known as cerumen, which is formed by normal secretions of the ear canal skin combined with dandruff.

Earwax lives in the ear canal and is the ear's loyal guardian. Its oil can capture invading dust and bacteria; its bitter taste can also expel small insects that fly into the ear. In addition to ear diseases, itching in the ear may be the reaction of earwax fighting with dust, bacteria or small flies. Some people worry that earwax blocking the ears will reduce hearing, but this is not the case. Don't worry if there is too much earwax, it will fall out automatically as you shake your head and as you talk or chew.

If you want to clean your ears yourself, you can only choose to simply deal with the earwax near the ear canal opening that can be seen by the naked eye, and do not clean the earwax too deep in the ear. When operating, you should use a cotton swab, gently rotate it in the external auditory canal, and then pull the ear so that the ear canal opening faces downward to encourage the earwax to come out on its own. Never use sharp objects such as nails, iron sticks, hairpins, etc. to pick your ears.

From the above article, we know that cleaning children's ears can keep them healthy. In life, parents can choose to give their children appropriate amounts of ear cleaning, but not excessively and frequently, as this will harm their hearing.