Imagine you’re in a supermarket. You’re walking down the cereal aisle, thinking about what you need for dinner, half-listening to the music playing overhead. Normal. Easy. You don’t even notice most of what’s going on around you because your brain filters it out. The hum of the freezers, the beep of the tills, someone’s trolley squeaking three rows over – it’s all just background. Your brain decides what matters and quietly bins the rest.
Kya’s brain doesn’t do that. Kya hears everything.
The squeak of someone’s shoes on the floor. A baby crying near the entrance. The hum of the fluorescent lights above her head. A cough from three aisles away. Someone laughing by the deli counter. The hiss and grind of the coffee machine. Coins dropping into a till. A sneeze. A trolley wheel catching. The rustle of a carrier bag. A car siren outside in the car park. The beep-beep-beep of a barcode scanner. All of it, all at once, at the same volume, with no filter, no hierarchy, no way of telling which sounds matter and which ones don’t.
Now imagine that every single one of those sounds is turned up. Not a little – a lot. Imagine they’re all competing for your attention at the same time, like forty radio stations playing at once, and you can’t turn any of them off. That’s what a trip to Tesco feels like for Kya. That’s what a lot of the world feels like for Kya.
We didn’t understand this for a long time. We’d take her shopping and she’d be fine for the first few minutes – and then suddenly she wasn’t. The hands would go up over her ears. The body would stiffen. The flapping would start, fast and urgent, not the happy kind. And then, if we didn’t get her out quickly enough, she’d shut down completely. Eyes glazed, body rigid, unreachable. Not a tantrum. A system overload.
Soft play was even worse. If you’ve ever been to a soft play centre, you already know – they’re loud at the best of times. But through Kya’s ears? The screaming, the squealing, the thud of children landing on foam, the echo bouncing off every hard surface, the music pumping through speakers that nobody asked for – it’s an assault. We tried a few times in the early days. We stopped trying pretty quickly.
Restaurants were tricky. Cafes were hit and miss. Birthday parties were a write-off. Anywhere with unpredictable noise – which, let’s face it, is almost everywhere – was a gamble. Some days she could handle it. Some days she couldn’t. We never knew until we were already there, and by then it was often too late.
Then we discovered noise-cancelling headphones. And everything changed.
It was Sarah’s idea. She’d been reading about sensory processing and came across other parents talking about them online. We bought a pair – proper ones, not cheap ear defenders, the kind that actively cancel out background noise rather than just muffling everything. We weren’t sure Kya would even keep them on. She doesn’t like things on her head. She doesn’t like things touching her ears. We expected a battle.
She put them on, and she exhaled. I’m not exaggerating. She physically relaxed. Her shoulders dropped. Her hands came down from her ears. She looked around the room like she was seeing it for the first time without the noise getting in the way. Like someone had turned the volume down on the world and she could finally think.
The headphones don’t block everything out. They turn the chaos into something manageable. They give Kya back her edges.
Now they go everywhere with us. Supermarket? Headphones on. Soft play? Headphones on. Restaurant, shopping centre, train station, airport – headphones on. They’re as essential as her shoes. More essential, honestly. She’d walk barefoot before she’d walk into a noisy room without them.
The difference is extraordinary. With the headphones on, she can do a full shop with us. She can sit in a cafe and do her food-watching. She can walk through a busy town centre without shutting down. She’s still Kya – she still notices everything, still processes the world differently – but the headphones take the edge off just enough for her to cope. They don’t block the sound out completely. They bring it down to a level she can manage. The coffee machine is still there. The trolley is still squeaking. But they’re no longer screaming at her.
People stare sometimes. A child wearing big headphones in a supermarket gets looks. Some people assume she’s watching something on a tablet. Others just don’t know what to make of it. A few have asked. I don’t mind being asked – I’d rather explain than have someone assume. “She hears everything at the same volume,” I say. “These just turn it down a bit.” Most people nod and carry on. Some of them look like they wish they had a pair themselves.
The thing is, Kya’s hearing isn’t broken. If anything, it’s sharper than ours. She hears things we’ve completely tuned out – the buzz of a light fitting, the click of a thermostat, a dog barking two streets away. Her ears work perfectly. It’s the filtering that’s different. Most brains sort sounds into “important” and “ignore.” Kya’s brain files everything under “important” and expects her to deal with the lot.
The headphones are her filter. The one her brain doesn’t provide. They’re not shutting the world out – they’re letting her into it, on her terms, at a volume she can handle.
We’re on our third pair now. The first ones were too tight. The second ones she loved so much she wore them in the bath, which didn’t end well. The current ones are perfect – soft padding, gentle fit, good battery life, and a shade of pink she specifically pointed at in the shop. She chose them herself. She knows what she needs.
Last week we did a full supermarket trip – the big one, not the quick top-up. Forty-five minutes, every aisle, busy Saturday afternoon. Kya walked the whole thing beside me, headphones on, calm as anything, occasionally pointing at things she wanted me to put in the trolley. A few years ago that would have been impossible. Now it’s just Saturday.
A twenty-quid pair of headphones. That’s all it took to give her the world back.
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