Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion My kid cannot stop humming. What should I do?

I have a 5 year old boy who is now in kindergarten. As far as academically, he is one of the top performer in his class. He is doing quite well in maths, reading and writing as well as following rules. However, he has a little problem playing with others and easily upset if others does not play his way. He is very emotional and he will cry even reading or watch sad stories. What really bothers me is his humming. He can't stop humming. He hums at bath time, eating time, and most annoying while we are driving. He does not hum random noise. He actually hum real songs that he learned from school and from his church music CD's. Now Christmas is around the corner. He is now humming some Christmas songs. I have to constantly remind him not to hum. Last night I ask him before going to bed, "How do you feel when you hum?". His answer was "Happy".

What should I do as a parent?

Why not let him hum? Isn't that a happy thing for him to do? I used to hum a lot as a kid, before I became good at whistling and later learned to play some instruments. Do you think he'd be interested in learning more about music?

If you're worried that it's a sign of a disorder, I would just ask his doctor about it.

Funny - this was my youngest at that age, except he would also hum songs he was composing in his head. He would sing so loud in Costco that people several aisles away could hear him. He hummed in the car, at home, in bed at night. It never bothered me, though - I liked hearing the sounds of a happy child.

When it became a distraction in class - especially after he roused the class with a rendition of Canon in D where the class ended up marching around the room with all of them humming, his kindergarten teachers asked if I would work with him to help him find a way to stop humming during tests or quiet time.

I asked him why he hummed, and he said that the notes were so loud in his head, he just had to hum them to hear what they sounded like out loud. He said he wasn't always aware that the humming was out loud.

We finally worked out a system where the teacher would just gently touch his shoulder when he started to hum at an inappropriate time. It was enough to break his concentration and make him aware that the humming was out loud.

He's ten now and plays his keyboard with the headphones in, sometimes for hours. He hums around the house and at school but has learned to squelch it when it's a distraction.

Hope this helps.

I think some kids just like to hum. My ds8 hums all the time,and,yes, it's now Christmas songs. We joke about it (it's in our Christmas letter this year as one of his hobbies). Most of the time the teachers are okay with it because it's pretty quiet but we hear about it EVERY year. In fact, we usually warn them in advance.
So, no good solutions, but some empathy. And it's weird, ds10 almost never hums. Dds20 and 18 were both singers (dd18 was in the country's top show choir and it consumed her) and yet, they didn't really hum either.
Good luck
Theresa

DS7 hums and sings constantly. When I questioned him about it, he says it helps him think. It's especially prevelant when he is doing math homework. His teacher talked to me about it at the beginning of the year as it was disrupting the other students. DS now hums under his breath in class.

Stephen 126,
Welcome to the forum. This is a tricky one.
1) How much does it bother you, personally? Lots of gifted folks are 'worn out' by extra stimulus, such as florescent lights humming, music out of pitch, certian indoor lighting, clothing tags and seams on socks. It is postulated that the same 'supersentive' nerves that make a child great at learning, can cause them to be bothered by things that don't bother others. See OverExcitablities for more. I've made a few leapfrog assumtions - one of them is that you are gifted yourself and it's worth it to ask if you are extra sensitve as well. I say this because taking care of ourselves as parents is vitally important, even if we are extra-sensitive. After a few years of learning to accept my extra-sensitivities, I'm now using meditation to become less sensitive, and I love this new self confidence.

2) DS5 may be bored with school. Gifted kids tend to look 'immature' because they cry at sad things that other children don't even really percieve as sad in the first place - at least not deeply. This isn't really immaturity, as some of us never grow out of this, it's just taking him extra time to learn how to handle this 'larger than average' emotional sensitivity.

3) Is the humming a problem at school? If not I would try to enjoy it. There are lots of advantages. My son was a hummer and then a whistler - I always knew where he was, and when he was about to enter the room. He is very musical, messing around with several insturments. He was able to self-soothe and self - entertain when life wasn't giving him enough challenge. I would try and make sure that your son practices 'humming silently' - although I don't think this is possible to accomplish at age 5. If I could deliver the message with love and acceptance, I would try to have 'modulation challenges' so that DS gets lots of practice with humming softly.

((shrugs))
They can be quite odd little things, yes?
Love and More Love,
Grinity

Sometimes when the humming starts to drive me crazy, I offer dd gum. Of course that can drive me crazy too, but I get a little break in between.

Ditto for the gum. We actually just had this written up as an accommodation last week in DS's 504. It's made a huge difference in the classroom.

My DD went thru that phase for about a year, but with her it was whistling. It used to drive us all crazy. She eventually outgrew it.

Just thought I would chime in and say DS6 is most certainly a hummer. You get used to it in time. It has bothered other kids at school at times, half the time he really isn't aware of it. Usually it is when he is really into things and thinking too...but it can be lots of different times. Gum does help, but we save it for when we are out and it is expected he is quiet. He doesn't hum during watching TV and a few other times during the day. Those moments of quiet are nice. I am happy he seems to be happy though, and I have learned to zone it out at times.