Patti Wigington from Pickerington, Ohio, recalls her son's extreme reactions to loud sounds. "He was a very twitchy toddler," Wigington says. "The slightest noise would set him off. Once a fire truck went past our house and he screamed for 45 minutes. Another time a car next to us back fired and he cried for a good hour."

Sound familiar? Some little ones are simply more sensitive to sounds than others. Interestingly, Wigington's daughter (her son's twin) never had this startled reaction to sounds. Wigington describes her as mellow and happy and able to just go with the flow.

Claire Lerner, director of Parenting Resources at ZERO TO THREE, a nonprofit multidisciplinary organization based in Washington, D.C., whose mission is to support the health and development of infants, toddlers and their families, provides some answers. "Babies are born with their own unique sensory processing system," says Lerner, who explains that a child's neurological wiring influences how they react to the outside world. Those children who are more sensitive do not have the same kind of filtering system.

Lerner gives an example:

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