My noise nuisance children

[Lucylongcat]

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.

kids make noise. there are things you can do. (i bought camping mats to pad the floor and do physio on and have cushions on the floor., and we have rules about quiet play like no jumping, no clomping up the staiirs) however there are things I can not do... meltdowns for instance. sometimes doing anything makes the noise worse.

5 minutes at midnight is an eternity and there is not much one can do to get them to be instantly quiet.

just for information, keep a record of when you can hear their child cry.

perhaps mention it in concern... ahh she was crying a lot last night, is she poorly?

pretend you do not think it was them who reported you.

pretend you have not been informed of the report (at least to them)

Your right vagina, asking me if I am a noisy screaming mum with kids who aren't just noisy but NOISY, isn't at all offensive. My apologies. Total over reaction on my part.

There are two ways people can read this story. Either I'm a decent mum making normal family levels of noise, or I'm a noisy mum with no concept of what is actually reasonable. I've identified myself as the former. My neighbour has identified me as the latter. The midnight crying was a bit of a red herring as it didn't happen at for but at a younger age. I tried to pull out the more ridiculous reasons for tantrums and some of them were not current. Sorry for that.

So you acknowledge that there are "compromises" that you could make?
But you're now not going to because they've annoyed you? It sounds like they definitely may have a point.

Hmm... Wonder why the nice neighbours moved?

You HAVE to get a handle on this and stop it.

It's not funny, cute, spirited, it's a bloody nightmare and grossly unfair

I'm interested as to how you say you would 'make compromises' if they'd approached you, but yet you say the level of noise is outwith your control.....?

Other people, particularly older people, complain about ordinary family noise because they mistakenly believe they have the 'right' to enjoy silence and have little tolerance for any noise.

No one has a right to silence, the arseholes.

You sound pretty unreasonable. There is nothing worse than neighbours who play the "kids will be kids" line. Take control

Not saying that's what going on here like...I have no idea.

I tell my ds not to stomp up the stairs, not to shout in the garden, and to consider others. He was 4 when we moved here, it's our job to tell our children about behaviour and consideration.

I'm amused that my post is the only one you're getting arsey about when I was actually being quite neutral, suggesting that there are different levels of noisy. Meanwhile the posts actually commenting on your parenting in a negative way are ignored. Seems logical! :)

We are in a semi next to 2 screaming kids aged 5 and 3, they wake me up at 6am every morning, I never get a lie in.I swear they are the noisiest kids on earth. It's bloody awful, especially as I am a shift worker and can never catch up on any slep because of them.

Our neighbour complains about my children WALKING too loudly on carpeted and rugged floors with no shoes on. Tells other neighbours how loud we are due to this walking etc.

One has additional needs and IS flat footed but i have done everything to minimise the noise so i am a bit peed off about it tbh. No loud music, no running about, no screaming or shouting just walking.

My child has been told they should tiptoe and we were initially asked to keep the children out of the house when he is on nights.

My friends neighbour reported friend for having a child who sings for an hour every night - 5-6pm. There are some bloody weird people out there!

Bit different to someone 'screaming for eternity' because they want a plaster, at midnight

Yes that's true Fun. But seriously some people will complain about nothing

You think your family noise is normal. Someone else in your street clearly doesn't. I lived next door to screamers for a couple of years and it can be very stressful.

I would put a letter through the door saying please can you stop your baby crying, let her see how it feels!

I would put a letter through the door saying please can you stop your baby crying, let her see how it feels!

A baby doesn't understand. A 4 year old does!

Have you can considered that maybe you ARE too noisy? That the sound of your children 'playing nicely' is actually loud and disruptive to the neighbours? Surely they wouldn't complain otherwise.

I think in a terrace or flat you do need to teach children to play quietly and have respect for neighbours. 4 and 6 year old should know to keep noise down indoors and need to be disciplined if the noise level keeps rising. How do you discipline them when they get too loud or 4-year-old has a screaming tantrum? Clearly telling them to be quiet isn't effective enough to prevent it happening over and over.

Are they shouting and screaming during play? Banging things, racing around, slamming doors etc? How often do they get 'noisy' needing an adult to intervene?

I don't see how anyone can object to an occasional tantrum but it does seem a bit odd that a 4-year-old is regularly having tantrums that disturb the neighbours. I think their situation is very different- a 9month old baby can't help crying, and toddlers are too young to understand their noise disturbs people- but school age kids should know better!

I've lived next to noisy families in the past. The noise of kids shrieking, banging, thumping on walls (or screeching on recorders!) is awful to live next to.

Unless you live in a detached house, most people teach children that excessive noise indoors is unacceptable.

The kind of compromises I would make is shifting potentially noisy activities, like playing musical instruments (which we only do once every couple of months) or water fights in the garden (hardly frequent in it climate) to times which did not inconvenience them.

When I think about compromises I would make for someone who had severe pain and couldn't bear any kind of noise, to be honest, I think the best compromise would be them moving out. This is a very family heavy area with kids playing out on the front all the time. It will never be quiet. I tried saying I would train my kids to whisper, but I think that would actually be depriving them off an essential freedom of childhood. My sympathy and respect to hippo who is in the situation of having to make just those choices.

My next door neighbour used to put her Dc to bed at 5.30.
She ignored them screaming and fighting for the next 3 hours.

I had a toddler and a new baby, neither of whom could settle until the screaming next door stopped.

They woke at 6 every morning and screeched until she got up at around 8.

It was an absolute nightmare.

Then she went home for the summer and left her brother in the house. He used to arrive home at midnight and play loud music till about 3.am. Every night.

Didn't help my PND.

It's all a compromise. My neighbours kids gets up way early and screech. Mine are older and probably go to bed too noisily for them. We rub along.

My neighbours smoke weed and it stinks out our upstairs. We cellophane our air bricks and vents, because actually, they all go to bed pretty early and it's better than when we had a houseful of itinerant workers next door who played trance till 2am.

My neighbours have a stupid noisy car with huge revs that wakes my kids up on the days he works. But my kids and their early morning moaning probably wake up them on the days I work.

My husband turns on floodlights to load his van at 6am. It's probably annoying.

My point is, as a neighbour you weigh your odds. Where I am, a quiet family with a noisy car is a good deal. They probably thank their lucky stars we both work and don't complain about the dope.

I lived for many years in highrise flats in London. Sound travels. In fact, my new born was travelling up the lift shaft in terms of noise. He was colic suffering, we were on the 14th floor. A lady from the twelth met me. We went to my flat, ascertained I abutted the lift shaft, henceforth I shifted the baby room, insulated one wall and it was fine. Moral is, talk if necessary. It's better by far.

It's tough. I also have noisy kids.

I think your neighbors are just new parents struggling with a baby. If their baby doesn't sleep well at night perhaps it's getting woken up by your kids during nap time and they feel frustrated.

I know there's not much you can do and I'm sure when their child is older and if they have more, then they will probably be noisy too. But you were once a new parent and you can probably remember how stressful everything was so maybe cut them some slack?

It's unlikely they complained about an occasional water fight or monthly music session. More likely your kids play and fight noisily on a daily basis or are just too loud generally.

Living in an area with lots of families doesn't mean you can't teach kids to keep noise down indoors. Isn't the part of teaching them good manners?

I feel for your neighbours if you think it's ok for school-age children to have screaming tantrums, shout and fight on a regular basis!

How do you know it was definitely them that reported you?

Could it have been a neighbour one or two doors down, who perhaps hears the kids in the garden, or walks past and hears active children playing.

I disagree with everyone that you need to speak in hushed tones and tiptoe about quietly in the day time. If it is between 7-10 at night, and it is reasonable (which includes children shouting at times) then the council will not be interested at all.

This is terraced housing! I can hear my neighbour's budgie squawking all day every day. Sometimes they argue, and we can hear the swear words! Sometimes we shout, so they can hear ours.

I wouldn't like children shrieking or being elephant like all day every day, but presumably a 4 and a 6 year old are out most of the day anyway, so any noise is fairly time limited.

But then, perhaps I am 'one of those mum's'. I have a child who when she starts screaming, having a proper paddy, I can't shut her up. I don't know how to do it- I've tried (over the years) : bribery, being very firm, shouting, threatening things taken away. Short of holding her mouth shut, what am I supposed to do? Luckily these paddies are very infrequent now, less than once a month, but she had one at night recently and I simply couldn't stop her. We had to leave her to get on with it (in a restaurant/out in public, just remove and go home, but where do you go at home?) A child in a meltdown is not rational, so telling them the neighbours can hear, that this is very naughty and there will be consequences has no effect whatsoever. Neither does withdrawal of computer, though it does make her sorry.

My neighbours are nice though, and have their moments, so I guess we all accept we live in close proximity and so have to get on with it.