Can't cope with neighbour noise

But she says they shout through the door and at each other.

What happened to consideration?

Well, legally and local government guidance will always exclude normal family noise. Baby crying at 1 am there is no law etc.

This is the problem - morality aside, it's not illegal to talk or make noise in your own home, and there's certainly nothing illegal about toddlers shouting or babies crying at anti-social hours.

That doesn't mean it can't be annoying as fuck, but complaining isn't going to get OP the outcome she wants (silence) - it's just going to piss them off.

To be fair we don't have an independent view of the noise. Given the equation with baby and toddler interactions i would be sceptical.

Well, legally and local government guidance will always exclude normal family noise. Baby crying at 1 am there is no law etc. To encourage people to give out about it is unlikely to go well.

The Op obviously has a noise sensitivity that is more likely to be rectified by their actions not others

ive lived in 2 terraces.

Both eith children next door and one had a shared back yard.

No one ever made this sort of noise.

I understand you don't feel it's about right or wrong, but you do need to think logically and decide what the actual point in speaking to them is.

You've already acknowledged they're just making normal family noise, so there's very little point in actually having a conversation unless you think they an actually do something to make it any better, surely?

I'll be honest, if a neighbour of mine complained because I had my door open in summer and they could hear me going about my daily life, I would just ignore them.

Because I think it was patently obvious that I meant for the OP to talk to the adult neighbour.
The adult in the house can then easily moderate their own voice or arrange for children to be kept inside before 7am or bring them back in at a certain time etc etc
I had 2 small boys and was certainly able to get them to be quiet from time to time. Not all the time but certainly possible for a period

Seriously?!

You think you can ask someone to moderate their voice in their own home? The Mum is not shouting or screaming here but interacting with her kids - I have all the sympathy for OP but this is just crazy.

The onus is on OP here, to find a way to live with this and how she reacts to the noise if moving is out of the question.

How is stating the "obvious" rude? A parent will interact with children are you expecting the parent to not?

Babies and toddlers can be loud it is normal.

I really don't think you can ask them to keep the noise down because it sounds like normal noise from a family with tiny children. They aren't playing loud music or banging balls against a party wall or thundering up and downstairs all day.

I think you sound a bit like me in that you get completely overwhelmed by noise. Where I live is normally pretty quiet but sometimes on hot summer days there's a lot of noise from people outside enjoying their gardens and I find it wearing. My solution is to go out into the countryside and get away from the noise and from people just to reset a bit. Is there anyway you could do that? Depends where you live obviously but there must be a park somewhere near where you could find a quiet corner to sit.

What time to the kids go to bed? Can you use your garden after they've gone to bed? Surely the parents aren't making a whole load of racket when the kids are trying to sleep.

Do you work from home? Can you go back into the office a couple of days a week? Can you go to a local library?

Try the loop in ear earplugs. I bought some recently for sleeping and they are so comfortable but they also do some for dulling environmental noise.

whole day is a running commentary from the mum to the children and she has a loud voice.

Start there. If she can moderate her volume, or go nearer to the children when talking, it might improve enough. Plus she could start encouraging her toddler to do the same. There's a reason primary schools implement "indoor voices" almost immediately. Ask her if she realises her voice carries and you can hear almost everything she says.

You can't change the level of noise and you (presumably) don't want to move but you can change the way you think about the noise. At the moment you have an emotional reaction to the sounds; you're anticipating them, you probably tense up every morning and your brain is highly tuned to picking up each and every noise. It is possible to change your response so that your mind filters out the noise as unimportant - in the same way that people who live next to railway lines, busy roads or under flight paths quickly stop hearing those noises.

I'm so sorry OP. I don't have any advice, I'm afraid, but you have my sympathies. I absolutely hate, hate, hate noise. I'm not ND, but I am sensitive and anxious. I'm also an introvert who craves space and silence. The UK is a hellish place for people like me. There are just too many human beings squeezed onto this little island, it's as simple as that. Developers take advantage and build tiny rabbit hutches which they jam on top of one another to maximize profits. It's disgusting. We're literally building new slums.

I live in dread of noisy neighbours. Unfortunately, they never stop building round here. My local woods have been hacked down to make way for two new estates, and a second giant estate has been built at the other end of the village. We've also heard that 800 new homes are planned for the road that leads into town. That road is choked with traffic now, so god knows what it will be like when an extra 800 cars are added. And the village news letter now tells me more houses are going to have to be built in the village. It just never ends. I'm constantly woken by the screeching and exploding of boy racer cars. And kids on motorbikes now fly up and down my road carrying drugs between the new estates.

I will do anything for peace and quiet. I'll move anywhere and make any sacrifice. I'd rather live on a narrowboat, or in a caravan, than on a noisy estate. If I ended up trapped on a noisy estate, on in a block of noisy flats, it would be a death sentence. And I mean that literally.

I haven't read the full thread but Loops earplugs have been a game changer for me.

I don’t think there is a solution and I’m not sure really what you think you’ll get from this thread? I dont know how you tell a family in their own home not to make normal noise, regardless of how loud and grating it is for you because unfortunately that is the joy of Terraced life! (And I speak from bitter experience.)

I use wax ear plugs at night, Bluetooth during the day and like you have been known to stay out of the house when it’a particularly bad just to stop myself going round and screaming at them to shut up 😁. I’m now looking to move because I know that it’s the only option.

I feel like this, I'm lucky that I'm end terrace and have a lovely single lady and her adult son as my neighbour but if she ever decides to sell I think I will too! I would struggle enormously with small child noise

I’m not sure many people making normal household noise would respond well to being told to speak less to their dc. I don’t think it’s a conversation you can have as they’re not being unreasonable.

Sometimes I think there should be a national campaign focusing on how 'other people's noise' affects others because it definitely got much worse over lockdown and seems to have just continued thereafter.

We used to have hellishly noisy neighbours - who were actually a lovely family but just SO loud.

No need to be rude! I meant the parents of course

If you really can’t mitigate and it’s making you this miserable, I think your only option is to move.

I do think it's the luck of the draw with a terrace. I have elderly neighbours either side, which I am hugely grateful for, but live in terror of them dropping dead and a young family moving in.

I think it's either moving or finding ways to live with it.

And exactly how is one supposed to communicate this with the toddler and baby?

Are you seriously not able to contemplate why one noise created by an autonomous human being differs from a controlled noise?

Honestly the critical thinking skills on here baffle me sometimes.

@jeaux90

Rural doesn't necessarily mean quiet, the noisiest house I've lived in neighbours wise was a tiny village and it wasn't the semi attached that was the problem - nightmare neighbours next door the other side, aggressive barking dogs, pot smoking, fights in garden plus further away at the "big house" a love of all night parties! And that's before you add in agricultural noise from tractors etc.

My house now is super quiet despite being terraced because it's an eco house properly insulated for noise and heat.