My child has a hoarse voice. Can it recover?

Author: Wang Guixiang, Chief Physician, Beijing Children's Hospital, Capital Medical University

Reviewer: Zhang Yamei, Chief Physician and Professor, Beijing Children's Hospital, Capital Medical University

Children are innocent, lively and active by nature. They are full of curiosity about themselves and the world. From babbling to shouting, they are all ways of exploring this new world. Every baby has a different personality and expresses emotions in different ways. Extroverted babies prefer to express their emotions by shouting and crying loudly, but this often causes the child's voice to become hoarse and the babyish voice to disappear. So, what should parents do when their baby at home becomes hoarse? Do they need to go to the hospital immediately? How can parents help their babies regain their cute and pleasant voices?

Common causes of hoarseness

The most common cause of hoarseness in children is vocal nodules caused by excessive use of the voice. Vocal nodules that occur in children are also called "shouting nodules", accounting for about 70% of hoarseness in children. Vocal nodules are symmetrical protrusions of the mucosa at the front of the vocal cords and are a benign proliferative disease. Because the vocal cords of children are not fully developed and are histologically different from those of adults, children have a weaker ability to repair vocal cord injuries such as shouting. If a child is more extroverted, the kind of person who loves to shout and make trouble, often cannot control his emotions, and always shouts loudly, or if a child likes to sing, sings for too long or sings songs that are not suitable for children, which exceeds the range of children's voices, it will cause damage to the vocal cords, and over time it will cause vocal nodules or vocal hypertrophy. Once there are vocal nodules or vocal hypertrophy, it will lead to incomplete glottal closure and cause hoarseness.

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How to determine whether your baby has vocal cord nodules?

When a child has hoarseness, parents should take the child to the ENT clinic in time. The cause of hoarseness can be preliminarily determined based on the time when the child has hoarseness (whether it appears immediately after birth or gradually), the duration of the hoarseness (relieving quickly or lasting for a long time), and the severity (mild hoarseness or difficulty in pronunciation). If further diagnosis is required, an electronic laryngoscopy is needed to further clarify the cause.

The impact of vocal cord nodules on children's physical and mental health

Hoarseness caused by vocal nodules not only affects children's voice condition, but also has a negative impact on their physical and mental health. Long-term hoarseness can easily cause children to be overly concerned in the group due to poor pronunciation quality. Children are prone to inferiority complex and perform poorly in activities that require pronunciation, such as singing, playing games, and raising hands to speak. Not daring to use their voices confidently to express themselves bravely, over time, children regard speaking as a burden, showing that they don't like to talk, don't like to make friends, become inferior, autistic, have no perseverance, and lose the desire to explore the world.

How can I get rid of hoarseness as quickly as possible?

Previous studies have confirmed that a large part of vocal nodules will shrink or disappear during adolescence. Therefore, it is particularly important to adjust the vocalization method and correctly guide the use of voice. If you want the vocal nodules to disappear as soon as possible, parents must avoid letting their children scream, cry, and make frequent noises. Parents should set an example by speaking softly when communicating with their children, and try to avoid shouting in noisy places to help their children develop good vocalization habits. For older babies who are interested in singing, you may wish to find a professional vocal teacher to teach your children the correct way to make sounds, and then sing, and you will have a clear and moving voice. Some younger babies who encounter things that are not to their liking cannot express themselves in words, so they like to express their emotions by crying. Over time, it will also make the child's vocal cords swollen, causing vocal cord hypertrophy, and then hoarseness. Therefore, parents should try to make their children cry less, pay more attention to communicating with their children, and teach their children to express their emotions with body language. If the child cries less, the voice will naturally return to normal, and the sound quality will gradually improve. For school-age children, if hoarseness persists and does not improve, they can go to a specialist hospital for voice training treatment, which can also achieve good results.

It is our common wish and our unshirkable responsibility to protect the cute and sweet voices of babies and let them enjoy a wonderful childhood. Protect the voices of babies from now on.