Reading When It's Noisy

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I'm sorry if this is in the wrong forum, but I want to learn how to read books when I'm not in a quiet environment. I sometimes want to read in the car when my electronic devices are out of juice, but I think I might have ADD, my earplugs don't cancel out enough of the noise, and I don't want to tell my parents to shut off the radio just because I'm the only one who doesn't want it on. Any thoughts?

Is listening to music (not loudly) while reading disturbing for you? If not, you might use some earbuds or earphones to play some mild music (piano, flute) while reading.

While a little more expensive, a small white-noise generator would help while you read. Generators look like radios but play sounds that resemble natural sounds from a babbling brook to a waterfall depending on your preference. This has the ability to covering up other sounds so that you don't notice them. If those ideas do work, you can always combine those squishy foam ear plugs with earphones over your ears.

There are even shooting-range ear protectors which are very quiet (http://www.cabelas.com/catalog/browse/h ... _104381280). Some range ear protectors (expensive) can listen for loud noise (you set the level) and cancel it out, while soft sounds, like conversations, are let through. I would suggest wearing them when you can lock your door or at least see who is approaching you (if you can't hear them, they WILL surprise you).

I know that you can only block out so much noise. Sometimes that doesn't even work if your coping mechanism have shut down. I remember being in fourth grade and having to tell my teacher that people were too noisey (the sound of whispering bothers me a lot) when the class was supposed to be quietly reading. I keep something turned on like a fan to block out some of the noise (like the television in my living room), use earplugs, etc. I hope this helps. Many times, I do wish I had a sound-proof space though.

It's literally impossible for me to read when there is any significant amount of noise, especially other people talking. There are some headphones out there that are supposedly very good at eliminating outside noise, maybe you can look into getting some of those.