'I hear voices in my ears'....

[Lollydaydream]

My dd (just 4) says this, when asked she says she can hear two of her friends from nursery and also 'Lily'. I'm not sure whether she means she hears her friends in her ears when she's with them or also when she's at home, as for Lily she has been mentioned on and off and she sometimes seems to talk to her - I'm thinking this is an imaginary friend??
The other day we had 'I have special eyes because they see rainbows and special ears because I hear voices in my ears'

What would you think hearing this? I have to confess it freaks me out but I think I'm overreacting.
She's at a nursery with extra speech therapy support so there is quite a lot of emphasis on 'listening ears' etc
Do imaginary friends mean she's lonely / struggling with something emotionally??

perhaps she is very sensitive to sound. How does she react to loud noises?

Hmmm, I wouldn't say overly sensitive to sound, possibly the opposite. Occasionally she'll focus in on a noise I wouldn't have done, but a rocket could go off if she's watching tv or engrossed in something and she wouldn't notice. She had grommets in last summer though after recurrent glue ear so it could be possible that she's still adjusting to normal sounds.

Maybe the idea of hearing voices with ears is novel/ unusual sounding to her, and the fact that that is what everyone does might be something that she hasnt really considered.

Can you ask her who Lily is or get her to show you Lily?

That does sounds plausible, she doesn't tend to think about how other people think or do things (mind you she is 4 so that's probably fairly standard!) so the idea that she hasn't considered that everyone hears voices in their ears is plausible.
I have tentatively asked about Lily, and been told 'she's in my ears', I did ask yesterday if Lily is just pretend (a concept she knows) and was grumpily told 'no I told you she's in my ears'. Other than that I just occasionally hear her say things like 'come on Lily'. I'm a bit worried about asking more, either that I will encourage her to develop it further or that I'll worry her that she shouldn't talk about her.

4.10yo dd has a computer in her head. It tells her stories and makes helpful suggestions which she is unable to ignore. She also has 'skin adaptors' which change according to the temperature/weather and in her eyes there are 'fear desistors'. She's utterly normal, promise. Imaginative but normal. Oh and the 'whum whummers'. The live in her ears. They make whum whumming noises but you don't need to be frightened of them, they're even smaller than The Borrowers.

And she's had several imaginary friends over the years, including an elephant who lives in our apple tree.

What is it that's worrying you? These things in isolation or is it part of a bigger picture?

It's worrying me as part of a bigger picture, but I do think I'm overreacting. Thanks for telling me about your dd that makes me feel better about it, I think part of my anxiety is that it all seems quite alien to me, I've not really heard anyone talk about their children having imaginary friends and I cannot personally imagine having one. (though of course dh announced last night he had an imaginary lizard). That said I've always tried to encourage her imagination re growing up to be a mermaid or looking for rainbow ponies.
The bigger picture is that she is having additional support for her speech, from what I've been told to date she's doing really well now and it is just her speech that is the concern (initially she wasn't socialising beyond two children) but I know some of the other chidren receiving the support she is have a range of communicating / socialisation or other 'issues' and it weighs on my mind that they might suddenly turn around and say there are other concerns and anything out of the ordinary like this worries me.
The other aspect is because her speech is delayed / hard to understand I'm not always 100% certain about what she's telling me - hence she says she hears her friends in her ears but I can't determine whether she just means when they are there (which obviously wouldn't concern me!) and I'm not sure about Lily (except I know she doesn't know anyone called that)
I do think I'm overreacting but it is helping to hear other viewpoints!

this thread caught my eye, my ds2 (4) says similar and he had grommets in the summer too

For him he hears 'the groans' they come in the night and try and get him to play. He has to tell them to go and bother someone else but they are a bit noisy.
His ears also talk to him, his left ear 'what you saying? I can't hear you> his right ear 'I like the tweeting of the birds' They have a 3 way conversation, its all very jokey and he kind of clowns around when he's doing it as though he's acting out some characters.
Finally the bats and the rats are his friends, he'll point to where they are sleeping (can be anywhere in the house) and we have to be kind and use our inside voices, they also hitch a ride in his pockets to get around.

Now I've written that down he sounds properly nuts I don't think he's struggling with anything just enjoying his hearing and inventing more games out of it. Before grommets he was a clingy, tearful boy, hearing has given him confidence

my other 2 ds's had grommets last year too - ds1 was almost 5 at the time, he struggled to adjust to hearing ie spent a day on the beach with his hands over his ears because of the noise of the sea, loud noises made him cry to start with - he didn't know any different from glue ear. Maybe for your dd it is normal to have voices/sounds in her head, apparently glue ear is like being under water. ds1 also talked a lot to himself before grommets and for a few months after as he was used to being in his own little world.

I'm not sure if that helps or not - I'm not going to say don't worry as I worry loads about my children about all kinds of things, its just what we do

Interestingly, dd has had a lot of problems with ear infections, hearing loss and glue ear. She was on a 'wait and see' approach re grommets but hasn't had an infection for 6 months. And the 'whum whummers' coincided with the ear problems seeming to clear (they said she'd probably grow out of it as she got older).

Oddly today we've worked out what the whum whummers actually are. There are 7 wind turbines in our town and you can only hear them if the wind's blowing in this direction. They emit a sort of whum whumming sound. And dd's bedroom backs in the direction of the turbines. And this morning when I opened her bedroom window I could hear them faintly. So in bed at night she must have been hearing them having not been able to 6 months ago.

Interesting isn't it?

This is really interesting, so nice you've worked out what the whum whummers are, can you explain it to her now?
I find it frustrating not knowing what's really going on, but maybe grommets or variable hearing has a much bigger impact than we realise. It must be a big change to go from the being underwater sensation to all the sounds. I was given the impression when she had the grommets that she might have a week or two of thinking everything's too loud (a bit like you've described for your older son incywincy) but not this sort of ongoing adjustment to hearing. Still I'm not sure they ever knew how bad her hearing was at times, it's so variable as to what it was like on the day of the hearing test.
I often think the world just must be very confusing for children, hence all the why questions.........

Ok, although this programme is about sleep, the main part of why the girl is not sleeping, which is because she has lots of imaginary friends and creates world in her head, hears voices etc.

Here's the link, i would watch it, provides an interesting insight to what goes on in young minds:
www.channel4.com/programmes/jess-britains-youngest-sleepwalker/4od

all the noises after the grommets could just be that she is actually hearing a lot better now. i had grommets a couple of times as a kid and each time after the operation I noticed the huge difference in sound. I also have tinnitus mine sounds like high picked musical tones, but everyone is slightly different. could be the "groans" your Ds hears incywincy tinnitus is more noticeable to sufferers in the evening when all the background masking noises have stopped. I always heard my tinnitus very loudly once the central heating stopped chugging along at night.

It's very common for kids with lots of ear infections etc. to hear voices or noises and make the sounds into imaginary friends to kind of explain it to herself iyswim.

I had glue ear and lots and lots of ear infections as a child. I heard what sounded like 100's of voices at once and also humming and ringing. It stopped happening when I was about 7/8.

Your DD is probably a bit confused by all the "new" sounds she's hearing too.

Thanks for all the replies, it's been really helpful and nice to hear from someone who remembers it too. It sounds really confusing and distracting, I think I've been underestimating the impact of all of this on her - I wish we could have got the grommets in sooner (it took quite a while on the watch and wait approach they use now)