Approaching my loud neighbours?

[robbegrillet]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could offer any advice on tackling the problem of my neighbours and their children being extremely loud and disturbing.

They are out in the garden with their children, who are both under 5, every day from around 6/7am onwards, this includes weekends. My bedroom window overlooks both mine and the neighbour's garden, it sounds like the neighbours and their children may as well be in my bedroom, especially if my window is open which it usually is especially now the weather is warmer.

Now I understand that children make noise and it would be unreasonable that I would expect for them to keep their children inside, however, I find it unreasonable that I am woken up early in the morning by not only the children, the parents can not seem to keep their voices at a respectable level either.

On many occasions I have heard the child express that they would like to be inside the house and the parent has replied that it is time for outdoor play.

I must add that these children are often left unsupervised outside and will scream and cry for a significant amount of time until they are tended to by a parent, it is not just normal sounds of children playing, these children sound distressed most of the time.

I work from home and these children are constantly screaming outside until around 7pm at night, I find it difficult to concentrate on my work and difficult to get a good night sleep when I am woken up early, especially on the weekends when I would like to have a relaxing start to the day.

I was wondering if anyone has had a similar experience and how they approached it, or advice on how to best go about the matter.

You can't OP. Just like you like the window open in the warmer weather - they like for their children to play outside !!

They're out of order for the early mornings, and for letting the DCs scream outside but I don't know that you can approach this without causing a confrontation and lots of bad feeling ongoing.

I think 8am would be more reasonable. That's when workmen are allowed to start making noise

Outside playing at 6am ?

Now that is unreasonable

At 6am I would be unreasonable and phone 111 and say I could hear a distressed child outside .... head tilt

They sound selfish, but if they lack the self-awareness to realise how noisy and annoying they are, they most probably won't care if you complain. We've had neighbours like this before. Detached house in the middle of nowhere fixed our problem.

My neighbours kids are lively. They are lively all day everyday in the backgarden. There are frequent fights and screams and it seems endless kicking of a ball against a wooden fence. Not just bouts of it. But hour on hour. I can udnerstand the mum wanting them outside if they are that lively but it sounds like a circus.
But if you think the kdis are distressed, then thats another issue.
6 or 7 am is just mad.

It's all weather for them. I've heard the child complain about being cold and they still insist she stays outside...

I'd have to fight fire with fire, and blast out music at bedtime or something.

They are being very selfish and unreasonable. When people live in very close proximity to each other there are certain unwritten rules about what’s ok and what’s not - unfortunately some people ignore them!

That's really selfish. 6am? Fuck off. Even if you happen to be awake at that hour, you don't want the first thing you hear to be screaming kids and raised voices. Early mornings are meant to be quiet. It's the only time of day when it's possible!

There are two issues here, one is the noise. But...if the children are being physically kept out of the house irrespective of the weather and their obvious distress, that is actually a child abuse/neglect issue.

Parents who are physically preventing their children from entering the house in daylight hours, are not going to care about how this affects a neighbour. If they don’t care about their own kids wellbeing, they won’t care how you feel.

I think you have to ask yourself if these children are actually being mistreated in that regard and if they are, whether your willing to do something about it. It’s a tough one.