There are so many occasions when you'd want to protect your baby's ears from high decibels — festivals, concerts, parades, fireworks, plane rides or even family celebrations (birthday parties are loud!). Luckily, baby-appropriate noise-cancelling headphones are a thing and they'll help protect your baby's delicate ears.
When it comes to buying kids' headphones for older children, they're often made for gaming or watching shows, so they limit audio output to kid-safe volumes. But sound-dampening baby ear muffs are different; they are meant to dim surrounding noise. It's somewhat ironic, because a baby's own cries can easily reach a stress-inducing 100+ decibels. But having a baby or toddler at an event where there is sustained 100+-decibel noise can lead to noise-induced hearing loss. That's why it's important to take preventative measures. And if your child has autism or is sensitive to sound, noise-cancelling headphones can also provide some relief.
At the Good Housekeeping Institute, we are all about baby safety and frequently evaluate products such as the best baby monitors and the best infant car seats. For this story, we consulted experts and scoured the internet to find the best noise-cancelling headphones for babies that have a Noise Reduction Rating (NRR) of 20 dB or more. We looked at 20 pairs of headphones and whittled the choices down to the five best.
Though manufacturers might say that baby headphones are suitable from birth, we have opted to list all of our picks as starting at 3 months. Talk to your pediatrician, but most tend to prefer that parents refrain from bringing a newborn younger than 3 months to a crowded (i.e. loud) event until they get their two-month round of immunizations (see the CDC vaccination schedule). It's also good to point out that none of these baby headphones will encase your baby in silence. Though they may be called noise-cancelling, they are really sound-reducing. Your baby will still be able to hear some noise. Keeping these factors in mind, in addition to comfort and user-friendliness, we selected the best noise-cancelling headphones for babies.
The one universal "con" of all baby ear muffs is that your baby might try to pull them off. To help thwart that issue, we've included tips and tricks for getting your baby to wear headphones at the end of our list. We also have information from a pediatrician on why you might want to use baby headphones, how we compiled this list and what to look for when shopping for baby noise-cancelling headphones.
If you're interested in finding some peace and quiet for yourself, check out our roundup of noise-cancelling headphones for adults or sound machines for sleep.
If you have any questions on Best Hearing Protection for Babies. We will give the professional answers to your questions.