Note This When Cleaning Your Child's Ears

Maintaining the cleanliness of the ears of babies and children is important. This is so that the dirt around the ear does not cause unpleasant odors and triggers infection. Not infrequently, you are told that cleaning your child's ears should be done by an ENT doctor. But actually, you can do it yourself as long as you know what needs to be considered.

The part of the ear that is clearly visible, namely the earlobe and a little outer ear canal, is not difficult to clean regularly. All you need is a washcloth, cotton ball, or fine gauze soaked in warm water.

After that, squeeze and wipe gently on the back and grooves of the ears, and part of the ear canal that looks from the outside. The earlobe and the outer ear canal are said to be clean if no more crusts or flakes of the child's skin are found.

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How about the ear canal?

The ear canal contains glands that naturally produce cerumen or earwax. So, serumen is something normal and harmless. On the contrary, the effects protect and moisturize the ears, while at the same time antibacterial.

Under normal circumstances, serumen functions to keep the burrows and eardrums dry and prevent germs from triggering infections. In addition, serumen functions to catch dirt, dust, as well as other particles so as not to enter the ear which can cause irritation and injury.

On that basis, the ear canal does not need to be cleaned regularly. The ear can produce cerumen and cleanse itself. However, a small proportion of children are susceptible to cerumen accumulation, which sometimes triggers ear pain and interferes with hearing.

A safe way to clean the ear canal from the cerumen

If the child's serum is felt excessive and too hard, you can soften it first using 2-4 drops of olive oil, baby oil, or mineral oil. Place the oil in a small container and warm it using your palm until the temperature is more or less the same as the skin's body temperature. Use a pipette to drip oil into the child's ear.

After that, position the child lying on his side with the dropped ear facing up and let the oil work for a few minutes. When the child is seated again, the series will start to melt and come out. Then, you can clean it with a washcloth or fine gauze that has been moistened with warm water.

Can you use a cotton bud?

The pediatrician association in the world, including Indonesia, does not recommend using a cotton bud to clean a child's ear canal. This is because according to data in the United States in 1990-2010, cleaning ears with a cotton bud became the most common cause of children entering the emergency unit due to ear injuries.

The injury includes foreign objects in the ear, namely the tip of the loose cotton bud that goes into the ear, eardrum tears, and soft tissue injury in the ear canal.

The ear is a sensitive part, so parents need to be careful when cleaning it. As a general rule, the part of a child's ear that you cannot see clearly does not need to be cleaned. As the saying goes, "nothing smaller than your elbow" or anything smaller than your elbow should not be inserted into the ear. In addition to making the cerumen increasingly pushed in, the emergence of injury to the eardrum, auditory bones, and inner ear can lead to permanent complications.

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