Can You PLEASE Lower Your Voice?

James Kirk remembers what it was like to be sensitive to sounds in elementary school. “Loud noises were probably the worst for me,” he says. “The other kids laughed when I crawled under my desk during a fire drill.” In addition to the problem in response to loud noises such as bells or sirens, he had difficulty paying attention to his teacher or focusing on schoolwork because he could not filter out the distractions in his classroom. “I picked up bits and pieces of what was being said, but I didn’t do so well back then because I was always looking around to locate the sources of the noises that