Loud DC and unhappy neighbour. Would you move?

Anyone would be pushed the edge with ongoing severe sleep deprivation. I don't think that's a resilience issue.

It does. There is absolutely no question that sleep deprivation is stressful, exhausting and debilitating for everyone who has to deal with it.

The point about resilience, was that if it is destroying your MH, your MH likely wasn’t great to begin with. That’s not a targeted thing against you, but we can’t be holding disabled children responsible for someone else’s trauma, or how much push they need to reach the edge.

It would also be very difficult to know if your NDN was mentally vulnerable when you accepted a house for your child.

There’s been a lot of big language on this thread. Suffering, victims, disabled children are problems, life ruining, destroying.

I genuinely think that that’s hyperbolic. I would never refer to someone being awake and existing in the only way they know how as life ruining.

I can well accept that it’s exhausting. I’m exhausted 😂. But if it was ruining my life, I’d assume my life was in a fairly precarious place to begin with.

Quite. It's tosser-like to have no sympathy for everyone affected.

Lack of resilience??? Good god. I'm pretty resilient, but in those circumstances I know I would crumble. Sleep deprivation is torture - and the having no control and the stress of just waiting for it to start ... It's never happened to me and I pray it never does. But I know that I would go from absolutely fine, as in no history of depression or mental illness or anxiety or anything, to properly suicidal in those circumstances. How you can think that long term sleep deprivation in those circumstances isn't enough on it's own to break someone is beyond me.

Why do you keep saying the neighbour is a “tosser” when she’s having her life and her teens lives ruined by sleep deprivation? Does empathy only go to OP - not to the neighbours who have to put up with this too?

I didn’t bring that into it other than in reply to the poster suggesting that it’s a lack of resilience on my part to be affected by it. I am not lacking in resilience was the point I was trying to make, as I’m sure you could get from the post, not that it’s a related problem.

No matter how resilient anyone is. Listening to someone else’s noise constantly and being woken up at 4am every single morning then having to do whatever they need to is bound to test someone’s ability to be resilient.

Yes, there might be a wait for a suitable property.

As someone said earlier, the HA may not have an abundance of suitable and detached properties available.

The market rent here for a detached house, with 3 beds, would be somewhere around £1800-£2500pcm. Having a reasonable sized garden would bump that up even further.

I don’t disagree that the neighbours might get difficult. I don’t believe difficult is the right way to approach it, but they might.

But, unless you had either those funds available or the HA could magically find somewhere of that kind for you, you’d be a bit stuck and in the same position everywhere.

It does seem that the OP wants to resolve the problem at least which is always a good start. The entitled idiots saying it’s tough & the neighbour has to put up & shut up are the problem, as I said further up thread I have known a similar situation & the good thing about HA’s is if you cause enough trouble for the disruptive tenant you can get them out especially if you own. Multiple calls to various agencies over a period of time will become too much for either the tenant or the HA & they’ll get moved or move themselves so probably better to talk & resolve rather than ignore.

Jesus, it’s not a “dated opinion” to not want to be woken up at 4.30 every single morning by loud screaming. FFS!
Thats so dismissive of the torturing effect this will be having on the neighbour and her teens. It will be ruining their lives!

I think when you have the kind of circumstances where your child is waking up the neighbours at 4.30, possibly for life, you do need to look at whether your way of living makes a home suitable or if it will be an unfair imposition on other people.

This is harder when you are in a HA property but I think OP could leverage the neighbour as part of advocacy to get moved to somewhere more suitable. It's not suitable for OP to have to deal with neighbour's who are aggro due to sleep deprivation. That can do things to people.

I suspect the neighbours will find ways to cope, because they will have to, and those ways may negatively impact OP and her son, but the neighbours will be past caring about that.

I come back to what I said earlier - suitable for who?

I don’t believe anyone chooses their house based on what their neighbours might be like.

We chose this one based on the room sizes, the layout, the outside space available. We’re fortunate to not have a load of equipment that has to fit somewhere, so weren’t limited on bedroom choice, but he is on the outside wall of a semi detached. Unless you’re deaf, I’d imagine you’d still be able to hear him.

We’re also fortunate to be able to both work and have reasonable funds available to give us better choice.

If you don’t have the funds or facilities for a detached property with all the things you need, especially with OP having limited choice because she’s in HA property, you have to look at what is suitable for your family.

You can’t take into consideration what neighbours you’ve never met may or may not have been previously through, want or prefer. You just need to house your kid in a suitable place for them.

Everyone deserves a suitable home and if you are waking people up at 4.30 permanently, it's not a suitable home.

OP's neighbour deserves a home and it's not really 'home' if you can't get basic rest. Maybe she can work with OP and a disability advocate to provide help to get them a suitable home? I know there might be a wait for that, but it would also relieve OP of the stress of a neighbour who might do who knows what as a coping mechanism.

This might not be possible but can’t you take him out first thing? Would he go in the car & this time of year maybe go to the park to get rid of some of his energy?

I can see that your life is difficult. But I would struggle with the noise that early in the day. I think I could cope if he woke at 4.30 but I knew you might take him out first thing so I could go back to sleep.

Where is his Dad - does he not go to stay with him? It sounds like you are single. Do you have other children in the house?

OP’s son may do it for the rest of his life, ours certainly looks like he’s going to, and he’ll always need somewhere to live.

There are steps you can (and should) take to mitigate it as best you can. However making it go away indefinitely is likely impossible, and everyone deserves a home.

Are you OP?

I agree, we aren't entitled to never encounter anything negative, and I think we all do because that's life. But I do think we are entitled to not be woken at 4.30am indefinitely. Babies and toddlers are temporary and I think everyone can accept that during the night more easily. OP's son is possibly going to do this for what - decades? Yes, the neighbour's have a right to not deal with that for even ten years.

I’m well aware of that. We did well today, 4:50. It’s a huge improvement on the 1-3am we’ve had all week.

But I still maintain that nobody is entitled to never encounter something they don’t like, even if that thing is a disabled kid doing something beyond their control.

I don’t believe that disabled child is responsible for anyone’s previous hardship, or what they’ve been through in their life, of how close to their existing edge they are.

The two things and two people coexist.

The neighbours may have existing problems. What has that got to do with an autistic child, how are they even close to responsible for their trauma.

There is a big difference between a temporary or occasional disruption and being woken every single day for an indefinite period of time at 4.30am.

It’s not, and sleep deprivation isn’t fine.

But if anyone is living their lives thinking they’re entitled to a disruption free life, boy is the world going to kick you in the arse.

Resiliance. You’ve no idea the things I’ve been through. How hard I’ve worked to build a nice normal peaceful life from nothing. I am product of an abusive childhood home so no stranger to being impacted by someone else. I’ve probably been more resilient than most of the population thanks.

Nobody knows anything about the neighbour or her life. How do you know she’s not struggling with something else and this has just tipped her over the edge? It’s all about mental health now but only the person with the disabled child’s then? Nobody else is allowed to struggle because someone else’s situation is worse?

You’re on the other end, it’s your child who you love making the racket. Everyone copes and minimises their own child’s noise because it’s theirs. Not the same as listening to someone elses is screaming and stimming at 4am is it really.

Ah yes, a bit of shouting at 8:15 is exactly the same as prolonged sleep deprivation. Silly me and my lack of resilience. I’ll go and listen to the birds tweeting and it’ll all be fine.

There’s a real lack of resilience on this thread.

We're not entitled to a pain or inconvenience free life. That’s genuinely not how life works. We don’t get to live forever with nothing bothering us.

It would be lovely if we did, but nobody lives in an ideal world.

My stepson is shouting right this second because he doesn’t agree with food today. I can still hear the birds, and the tap running in the bathroom.

Nobody is going to get upset because he’s angry about toast.

Only 6 months thankfully but it was the worst 6 months of my life. I actually posted on MN about the effect it had on me and got slagged off with people saying it wasn’t fair to trick someone else into buying the problem.

I did and do sympathise with the parents and the OP but it’s easier to cope with your own noise. Having someone else’s unreasonable noise (whatever it may be) invade your home, personal space, peace and quiet.

I had to be medicated to cope with it. I’m a very reasonable and normal person and had lived with normal noise in the past in numerous houses but this is not normal by any stretch.

My children were woken at all hours of the night. I work shifts so would go to bed exhausted. If I tried to sleep in the day after work I couldn’t as the noise was there. Sitting in the garden trying to relax or listen to the birds- ruined. Could no longer work from home. Just think of anything you enjoy in your home and I couldn’t do it, even the TV had to be on crazy levels to drown it out. Just made awful every aspect of life to the point I was on edge all the time. Even if it was quiet I would be sitting stressing about when it would start again, if I was out I wouldn’t want to go home and would try and find other things to go.

It was akin to mental torture and I’m sure all the people here saying tough or that’s life wouldn’t last 5mins living in that situation.

We listed our house for sale, I was gutted as it was bought from DHs grandmother so very sentimental and we had spent 5 years and every penny renovating it.

We didn’t end up moving in the end, they moved the child, but I still am terrified of it happening again.

We’ve done what we can - we were in the fortunate position to be able to buy a detached home - which was essentially the only thing we could do to mitigate the issue.

Sadly, owing to my son’s support needs, I’ve subsequently lost my job - so I’m fully aware that we may not remain in this fortunate position - like many other parents of disabled children