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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

10pm too late for young children?

77 replies

MotherofOats · 12/04/2018 12:43

Upstairs have 2 children 4 and 6. There is no carpet upstairs so I can hear general walking around. I've lived in this flat for a couple of months now and I can hear the children running bouncing and stomping around almost all the time :( recently that home I've noticed it carries on until at least 10 at night. As it was a Saturday I brushed it off but it's carried on for over three weeks now!
Am I being unreasonable to think that a 4 and a 6 year old should be asleep by 10? When I look after my nieces and nephews who are between 2 and 5 and they go to bed latest 8 p.m.!

OP posts:

MrsHathaway · 12/04/2018 18:37

Aint is not a word.

She's right, you know.

Ain't, on the other hand, with the apostrophe denoting contracting of "not" ...

[pendant]

The hyper poshos use it a lot. It's only the insecure middle classes who think it isn't proper English.

GreatDuckCookery6211 · 12/04/2018 18:49

Easter holidays or not it's really unfair to have young children running around that time of night.

TittyGolightly · 12/04/2018 18:57

Easter holidays or not it's really unfair to have young children running around that time of night.

Ever been to the continent....?

Flutterbyeee · 12/04/2018 18:59

Sorry Motheroats. Not sure what your message meant but never mind. I have my children's bath to sort out.

Look up "when should I use full stops?" Bloody sick of adults moaning about children.

clairedelalune · 12/04/2018 19:05

Until I had one I thought the same. Now I know different ..... If mine naps during the day they are still bouncing at 10pm

GreatDuckCookery6211 · 12/04/2018 19:07

Oops I missed " in a flat " off.

Sparklyshoes16 · 12/04/2018 22:51

Op YANBU I used to live in a ground floor flat and the noise from the family above was sometimes ridiculous! They too had young children (they were 2 and 6) sometimes up till 1am darting around on bare floorboards!! It really used to do my nut in!! They would apologise the next day but it would just carry on, I lost my rag one morning as I was exhausted and wanted a good nights sleep and a lie in the next day...they were up late had the TV blaring kids were up and it was 1am...then up early the next morning banging about...I was working that evening so wanted a lie in that morning I ended up like a crazy person banging on my ceiling with a mop handle it stopped immediately and they were much quieter on an evening from 9 ish...Luckily I met my DH and I managed to move out to our first rented house together with elderly neighbours on one side and the other side a guy who worked nights and slept all day was complete bliss!

Sparklyshoes16 · 12/04/2018 23:08

I think if I ever lived in a flat again I would be top floor or always above never below someone again.

LeighaJ · 12/04/2018 23:51

This thread has reminded me to make rugs or full carpet if we can swing it a priority before our baby starts walking. Especially since she's likely to be as clumsy as both of us.

icepop9000 · 13/04/2018 19:10

Not everyone can afford carpets and it doesn't always make a jot of difference!
In my old flat the upstairs put laminate flooring all through. It didn't make any difference to the noise. The kids used to walk around etc and wasn't loud to us. However, when we moved out the new people were always complaining. New soundproofing and carpets and they still complained.
I think you are being very unreasonable.

idontevengohere · 13/04/2018 19:46

Not in school holidays. Busy days often result in accidental car naps and late to bed.

DD43 · 13/04/2018 20:47

10pm is too late for kids of that age to be up IMO.

That aside, what kind of plum has laminate/no carpets in an UPSTAIRS flat?

Not sure what you can do about it though.

Suzielou66 · 13/04/2018 22:38

I don’t think you are being unreasonable. I wouldn’t want to listen to kids running around at 10pm every night. So many kids are allowed to dictate their own bedtimes and the amount of hours sleep they get is just not enough. The parents then wonder why their kids are getting tired and grumpy in the daytime. Making sure kids get enough sleep and making sure they are respectful to their neighbours is a parents responsibility. Sadly there are too many selfish people who don’t care about their own kids or anyone else.
Flutterbyeee why so aggressive? Are you one of these people who doesn’t give a damn about anyone else and let’s your kids do as they like?

TittyGolightly · 13/04/2018 22:42

Making sure kids get enough sleep

Do they come with an off switch now? My DD could no sooner sleep at 7pm than I could. She gets her 10-11 hours sleep per night no problem. They just start at 9-10pm.

WorldWideWanderer · 15/04/2018 06:39

Well, I'm with you OP but I'm older so my standards are old-fashioned compared with today's parents. 10pm is far too late for small children, even on holiday. In fact, even I go to bed at 10pm.....

My children went to bed very early, it got later as they got older but primary school age never later than 8pm. 9pm as teenagers. However, the older they got, the less they slept, so they were allowed to sit up in bed and read as they grew up and as teenagers they could be in their room (ready for bed) but might be finishing homework or reading or on the computer etc. The rule was that once 'gone to bed', even if they were up, there was no noise (no loud music) no coming out of their room (unless desperate for the bathroom) and no walking about....

Such rules seem draconian but necessary for parental sanity....and for the neighbours too!

PorkFlute · 15/04/2018 08:06

Yabu imo. It may well be the Easter holidays so they are up later as pp have said. Or they may have been put to bed and are doing the getting up every 2 minutes for the toilet/drink/being scared/whatever that a lot of kids do before they drop off.
If there is no restriction on flooring then I think you have to suck it up as a resident of a flat below a family. I think it’s pretty off that you complained about normal living noises - I’d hate to feel as if my children had to tiptoe everywhere in their own home. Get some earplugs or play some music or something if it’s a problem.

FASH84 · 15/04/2018 09:21

Ain't was in common use from the 18th century, derived from hain't a contraction of have not. Eg they hain't told their noisy children to go to bed. OED says still used frequently, but not for use in formal settings in modern English. Personally I don't consider Mumsnet a formal setting. Off topic I know but language shaming irks me.

TittyGolightly · 15/04/2018 09:31

10pm is far too late for small children, even on holiday. In fact, even I go to bed at 10pm

I’d have to be seriously ill to be in bed by 10pm. My natural sleep time is around 2am. I force myself to go to bed at midnight as I’m currently in a 9-5 job. (Considering a move to the med - seems a much more sensible culture sleep-wise and we all love a nap.)

BeesAreKing · 15/04/2018 09:33

As someone from a med culture, I confess I fail to see how the sleep culture there is any more "sensible", it's just different.

I personally don't like it much over there as I like to have my evenings to myself.

K1092902 · 15/04/2018 09:37

DD is 3. No matter what we do she wont sleep for more than 9 hours. So we have moved her bedtime from 7 to 9pm. She gets up fine and while can be cranky at the end of the day I aint getting up at 4am. Not a chance in hell when im in work for 12 hour days sometimes!

ButchyRestingFace · 15/04/2018 10:25

I've been under buy-to-let with stripped floorboards in an old style tenement flat for 10 years, so you have my sympathy there, OP. Am selling up this year and it will be top floor from now on for me.

As PP have said, check your lease for any stipulations regarding flooring. Depending on where you are, the council may have regulations for the flooring in rental flats.

The issue isn't the kids bedtime, it's the flooring of the upstairs flat.

ButchyRestingFace · 15/04/2018 10:27

That aside, what kind of plum has laminate/no carpets in an UPSTAIRS flat?

The majority I would say, judging from the flats on sale on Rightmove. Stripped flooring is all the rage where I am and acoustical testing has shown that to be the very worst for impact noise.

flowerslemonade · 15/04/2018 10:38

I think some flats are just noisy, unfortunately. Sometimes there aint much you can do about it :(.

littleducks · 15/04/2018 10:45

We moved somewhere like this kids would be running around at midnight. When mine went to bed at 7.

I hoped it would end in Sept when school starts they delayed school start til yr 1. Then when their eldest started school it continued....they won school certificate so despite all my believes about early bedtimes it obv didn't affect them.

Discovered they would nap from like 3-6 each day.

campion · 15/04/2018 17:44

Not a flat but average semi, walls not as thick as we thought. Next door's 3 (age 2, 5 and 9) are up every night often till midnight and beyond; holidays and not holidays. That's their business, obviously, but they get progressively noisier, including crying - probably because they're tired! A quiet evening in front of the telly or reading etc is a challenge on our side.

In true British style I'm reluctant to say anything, as yet. I conclude the parents either like having them up all evening or haven't a clue how to structure bedtime and sleep.

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