Why do voices crack during puberty

When you make your voice higher, your vocal cords tighten. You can notice this difference in how they feel as you adjust your speech. As your larynx grows, your vocal cords grow longer and thicker. Also, your facial bones begin to grow. Cavities in the sinuses, the nose, and the back of the throat grow bigger, creating more space in the face that gives your voice more room to echo.

All of these factors cause your voice to get deeper. Think of a guitar. When a thin string is plucked, it vibrates and produces a high-sounding tone. When a thicker string is plucked, it sounds much deeper when it vibrates. That's kind of what happens to your voice. Before your growth spurt, your larynx is relatively small and your vocal cords are relatively thin. So your voice is high and kid-like. Usually, by age 17, the voice fully stabilizes.

Milstein says. There are two main reasons why your voice may change with age:. An aging vocal mechanism. The most common cause of a voice change later in life is aging of the voice box and the respiratory system that powers the voice.

Aging may bring a loss of flexibility. The joints of the larynx may become stiff, and its cartilage may calcify. The vocal cords may lose muscle tone, flexibility and elasticity, and dry out.

Sometimes, the muscles of the larynx can atrophy, become thinner and weaker. Country music icon Trisha Yearwood is big on keeping family traditions alive around the holidays. Yearwood, who hosts Trisha's Southern Kitchen on the Food Network, says food traditions are especially important to her.

Yearwood loves to host a "misfit Thanksgiving," where they invite people who don't have a place to go for the holiday to their home.

Yearwood says that Brooks loves to tell stories about how his mother used to stay up all night to baste the turkey before Thanksgiving. But she's discovered a hack to get a moist bird without all the hassle: She leaves it covered in a pan of water in the oven overnight.

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The singer opens up about dealing with anxiety after her divorce. Read full article. Lauren Vinopal. May 21, , PM. What Is a Tween? Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Sign Up. What are your concerns? Verywell Family uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles.

Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Kliegman, RM. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. Elsevier; Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer; Related Articles. Learn About the Stages of Puberty in Boys. When Do Boys Stop Growing? Parent's Guide to Navigating the Tween Years.