Does anyone have little stomping children?!

[TheChild]

I love my children, I really really do. But it seems they skipped learning to walk and they learnt to stomp instead! The 8 year old is not so bad but my 3 year old is incapable of walking like a normal child ANYWHERE, she has to either run or STOMP STOMP STOMP. It's driving me crazy and I'm constantly telling her she needs to walk not run.

We live in an upstairs flat and the living room leads to the kitchen, so you can imagine there is a lot of traffic in this room and the floorboards seem to be a bit "wobbly".

Our lovely downstairs neighbour put a note through the door about the noise and explained under our living room the sound of walking seems to echo and apparently sounds like a herd of elephants. So now because I'm aware that we are the noisy neighbours from hell I'm even more irritated with the stomping but she seems to forget 5 seconds later that I've asked her to walk and she is back to stomping.

And breeeeathe!

Yes. Dcs age 4 and 2.5. I’m currently downstairs and they’re upstairs with DH. I swear to god that they’re going to come through the ceiling in a bit. Stomp stomp stomp. Jump jump jump. Light fittings shaking. It’s infuriating. But they will not stop doing it!

Do you have carpets and do you make your kids take their shoes off?

Yes! My ds5 stomps and jumps all the time- it does sound terrible when hes upstairs

Mine stomp too. Didn't think to much about it until we had wood floor installed. It's very loud. Luckily our attached neighbour is very kind about the noise and says she enjoys hearing them. She is a wonderful neighbour - I'm very lucky.

I would be even more infuriated by it if we were in a flat and I could hear the stomping even more, our poor neighbour 😳 I'm so sick of my own voice, I practically hissed "stop stomping!" at the toddler, I know she is only little and doesn't really remember or understand but god what is the rush?! Why are you taking your frustration out on the floorboards?!?

*in a house, not in a flat!

You need to be firmer. Sit them down and calmly talk about this. Tell them it needs to stop. Do reverse psychology and ask them what they suggest.

She'll grow out of it. Just keep reminding her. In the meantime can you do anything about the floorboards so you don't get any more notes through the door? Get a rug?

Mine are currently jumping off the window seat in dds room onto the floor. I’ve asked them not to. I’ve told them not to. But they’re not listening. So I’m sitting in the doorway to dds room waiting for the inevitable when someone lands on their face.

Ds has already tripped over the laundry basket.

You need to get carpets and shoes off at all times in the flat.

We already have carpet, it's an old flat and we will hopefully be replacing the carpet in the next 6 months. We WERE going to get hardwood flooring in the livingroom but now that we know just how noisy it is for the neighbour we are definitely sticking with carpet and getting the thickest underlay we can get.

There is a bit of a dip in part of the flooring which is where most of the noise comes from, you can hear it wobbling so I think we will need to have someone look at this (I know nothing about DIY, this is our first home we have owned!)

In that case you need to be firmer with them. They will learn (mine did).

I have stompers and from experience, the more you tell them not to do it, the more they will do it to piss you off as they know it hits a nerve!

Ballet classes!
Or make it a challenge!