I've apparently been reported to the council for having overly noisy children. I live in the middle of a row of terraced houses on a council estate. The family next door to me moved in three months ago. They have a 9 month old, we have a 4 and 6 year old. I know it's that side that reported me, as the other side is my friend who I share childcare and school runs with (and whose kids can definitely give mine a run for their money on the noise front).
Do we make noise? Yep, absolutely. My four year old can scream for an eternity for such easily solvable reasons as wanting a plaster at midnight or needing to wear the owl hat currently in the washing machine or not wanting to go and pick her sister up from school. We can go weeks without a tantrum and she has improved no end over the past six months, but when she's feeling sick, we can have one a day.
The two of them are pretty well behaved, I'd say. They can play really nicely together for hours on end, but obviously they will fight over toys or the other one playing some game incorrectly. Then there will be an outburst of shouting and my husband or I will intervene and it will settle back down.
Obviously, our neighbours think we have those new fangled one way walls, because we clearly cannot hear their little cutie screaming from dusk till dawn. I just didn't realise that their child's noise is unavoidable, whereas mine is clearly the result of inadequate parenting.
AIBU to wish upon them the most demented hell raiser possible when the terrible twos kick in? And to hope they get a family with teenagers on the other side so that they can hear what a real family argument sounds like?
Incidentally, when we rang the council, they told us that everything reported sounded like normal family noise, that the letter was sent out automatically after any complaint, and that if that was all there was to the situation, they didn't think we had anything to worry about.