Does your kid often answer "Huh?" to your questions or constantly crank up the sound on the TV or CD player? A recent poll commissioned by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) found that high school students are more likely than adults to say they need to turn up the volume, to say "what" or "huh" during normal conversation and to experience ringing in the ear—three of four symptoms of hearing loss. Use of iPods and other portable music players makes protecting kids' hearing more crucial than ever, says Pam Mason, an audiologist at ASHA. "Hearing loss from excessive noise can creep up slowly and painlessly and can affect hearing over a period of time," she explains. "Even mild hearing loss in a school-age child can be significant, because so much of learning is through hearing."

Tips To protect your child's ears:

• Limit volume. If you can either hear the music from your child's earphones or if she can't hear what you're saying from three feet away, the volume is too high.
• Limit duration. Give her ears a chance to rest and recover by restricting exposure to loud places and media (video arcades, iPods) to no more than four hours a day.
• Limit competition from other sounds. Opt for isolating or noise-canceling earphones, or ear buds, which block outside noise so your child doesn't have to turn up the volume. They're pricier than regular earpieces (about $60 and up), but they're worth it.