Neighbour banging on floor because baby crying

[benne81]

Has happened twice now. DS is 10 months old and last night had heat rash and teething so he was crying but was going to go to sleep - then neighbour bangs twice on the floor which startled him and then I was back to square one.

Neighbour is young male, works in the city & obviously has no understanding of children. I live in a London ground floor flat and unfortunately neighbours on both basement flat and 1st floor flat main bedroom is directly above and below DS - so they have probably put up with a lot of noise.

I do feel cross that they bang on the floor and startled DS, what do they think I am doing? If I could stop him crying I would. WWYD - is it worth writing him an email or should I just leave it.

If I were the neighbour and having to get up early and do a stressful job I think I would be a bit frustrated. Very difficult one as of course you are doing yoru best to keep your baby calm and quiet and babies do not always cope with the yeat.

If your baby is keeping him awake then i feel sorry for him. Obviously its not your fault either.
Is there any way you can decrease the noise level ? Insulation maybe ? Or switch bedrooms around so baby isnt directly above your neighbour ?

I think you should go round and say you are sorry , not because its your fault but because its a nice thing to do. Tell him you cant alwasy make a baby stop crying - or you would be very very rich by now but you dont mean to disturb him , can he try ear plugs or try to be patient for a little while longer ?

I must admit to having a bit of a giggle at 'shall I write him an email'?

Apart from the fact no-one seems to do that old fashioned thing called TALKING anymore...who even knows their neighbour's email address?

No idea if your young, high flying neighbour understands children...
but I'm assuming he was a baby himself at one time

Sorry definitely didn't mean to be patronising, just trying to describe him as definitely not child friendly - I don't mean all people without kids/ who work in the city are like this though!

I have his email, and everyone in our building, as we share freehold. We used to get on quite well but now I don't feel comfortable going and speaking to him about this as I don't think I can really change the situation & I suppose I feel pretty bad about it. Can't change rooms round.

Even if someone has no kids I can't imagine anyone on earth doesn't know that babies sometimes cry.

I wasn´t baby friendly until I had my own.

Actually, now that mine are teens, I´m probably not again.
Crying baby would annoy me.

I hope I wouldn´t have banged on the floor, though.

Before I had a baby I believed that babies only cried if they were being neglected (or abused), so if they were still crying after a minute, the parent must be ignoring them and letting them cry torture my ears. I know that I definitely wasn't the only one with that 'opinion'.

He is probably frustrated at being woken/kept awake and believes that you are happily ignoring your kid. Maybe you could explain to him that you are not leaving him to cry, you are trying to soothe him and he is crying because he is uncomfortable/in pain.

I'd be dead annoyed if my sleep was being disturbed because of a crying baby but I'd just have to deal with it or move.

Although when I lived at home the baby next door was always crying, the parents were too busy shagging and/or ignoring the poor thing. I did bang on the walls at one point when the baby was absolutely screaming and it's mother was screaming in an entirely different way..

Before I had kids our neighbours had a newborn and it cried all night a lot. We used to assume that they were leaving it to cry on its own through the night because that was the right thing to do to get a baby to sleep through. Now we have kids, I realise that a) they were probably up with the baby and it was crying anyway and b) that leaving a small child to cry is actually a really bad idea - not a good plan as I assumed then...

DO talk to him, sticking your head in the sand won't make this better.

I'm a neighbour living above a young family with a baby who doesn't seems to be crying at regular intervals for up to an hour. I admit that I'm in my late twenties and don't have any experience of kids of that age (I'm a secondary school teacher). I understand that babies cry, but I am starting to get concerned for the child. How much is too much? Not to mention the fact that I'm getting all of the negative aspects of fatherhood without actually being a dad, which can be very frustrating.

you might want to start your own thread, this is a zombie thread, ie. very old