my son (4 years old) has a ruptured eardrum which will not grow back. he can have an operation when he's older (when he stops growing) but in the meantime we are looking for advice from others who've had kids with ruptured eardrums. in particular, we want him to be able to swim and are looking for ideas about how to keep the water out (we've heard that even the specially fitted earplugs are not very effective).
thanks!

You might try silly putty. It worked great for us.

You might try silly putty. It worked great for us.
Really! Fantastic idea! Did your child (I assume) ever have the operation to repair the perforation? I have the feeling they do it much earlier in the US than here (we live in Holland, they told us not until he's 13 or 14).

Well, I don't know if you should use silly putty, but there is a special ear putty that you can get. I used that on my daughter when she had ear tubes. I got it from her ENT. He recommended it over the ear plug. My brother-in-law has a ruptered ear drum and he had a specially made ear plug made. He always seems to have trouble with it. I don't think it keeps water out as well as the ear putty, but it could be that his wasn't fitted well(don't know for sure).

My oldest son used to have ear infections all the time and had to have tubes in his ears. But my cousin's son had to have a patch sewn on his ear drum, and both my son's doctor and the cousin's doctor recommended the silly putty. It is not harmful at all and forms to the ear canal perfectly. It really did work great. My cousin's son had the surgery to fix his eardrum when he was 6. I don't know if the surgery your child is having is the same thing, but once my cousins son had the surgery his ear was fine. That has been a few years ago and he has had no problems. Good luck!

Both of my kids had to have ear tubes, but my daughter has been through the whole ordeal. The first set put in at 22 months never fell out. About 20 months later, she started bleeding from her ears, the ear tubes had festered with the amount of fluid that she produced. So they took her tubes out. Three months and 4 infections later - we had new ones put back in. They had to have time to heal. The second set fell out at 12 months exactly and I knew when cause she screamed with pain. I got her in immediately (within 1 hour) and the doctor gave her a shot but said her eardrum would probably rupture anyway. I think we barely got her through that one. Third set is in now (going on 16 months). Kinda worried about them festering again.
Anyway - we have had special eartubes (from the ENT) every year along with an Ear Bandit. The Ear Bandit is a wrap with velcro. It is water repellent and wraps around the head and covers the ears. The had really helped us alot. The tubes along with the bandit. I was so hoping we could have a summer without them, but looks like we may have to go another year.
Never heard of the silly putty, but sounds like it would work. Actually gonna recommend it to a friend of mine who's child has 2 different size ears.