Consequences of Stress on Children's Development

Noise

I remembered one of the families I worked with had a very bad experience with noise. Little John (pretend name) and his mom who is single live in a small apartment on a busiest street in San Francisco, CA.  The street is famous with the bars, lounge and clubs. Every weekend is like a nightmare for little John and Mom because not only the music may echo to their apartment and the noise that those people who finished partying made are the most annoying stressor in their life. Mom works full time in a restaurant and they are barely having enough money to rent this apartment. Mom stressed to me that poverty is not a stressor to her, but the noise is really making her and her son’s life miserable. Little John sometimes has nightmare about monster chasing him when he was woke up by those noise.

Fortunately, we have a Family Advocate to support families in our program. The FA helped little John’s family found an affordable apartment listed on the housing list form Episcopal Community services –San Francisco. We are very fortunate that San Francisco have all these resources support the low-income families such as housing, emergency housing, food program etc.

When I reflected back to little John’s family, I realized that have people ever pay attention to the resident around the bar and lounge, have you ever think of how the noise we are making after a few drinks could affect to these residency? These questions were also came from a recent news from my home town.

 

 There is a street in Hong Kong closed after 6pm to 6am for citizen to present any kind of street performance like singing, dance etc. It is FREE! Many people and tourist love to come to this street to explore and enjoy the freedom to express self through art. What a nice place for people to express self through art! However, all these noisy became a serious stressor to the residents around this block. There was no voice level control on the street. Many seniors complained that they have a hard time falling asleep, children have a hard time to focus to complete their homework. There was also an incident where an senior injury at home and it took 30 minutes for the ambulance to get through all these traffic that the performance created. A week ago, the city finally restricted the street performance will only open in the weekend. Residents are so happy with this change. These made me reflect on how many time we are having fun and enjoying something while we may be affecting others life?

Reference:

Episcopal Community services –San Francisco : http://www.ecs-sf.org/programs/housing.html