Noisy Neighbours - WWYD?

[FishFoo]

More of a WWYD than AIBU but here goes.
(Have NC)

Not a HUUUGE issue but a family moved in next door a few months ago. Two children around 4 and 2. The 4yo has become quite friendly with my 4yo.

Issue is they are so LOUD! Not just the kids. They are constantly shouting and screaming and banging! Kids don't go to bed until 11ish.

The worst of it starts in the evening at about 9pm and goes on til gone 11pm. Kids screaming, adults also screaming (presumably at the kids), and the banging... God the banging. I have no idea what on Earth they are doing in there but it sounds like either a herd of clumsy elephants live their or they are throwing furniture about every night.

My kids go to bed at 7pm and it is starting to disturb them and they are waking up asking what all the noise is and struggling to go back to sleep.

I feel I should say something, at first we could live with it as it was just annoying for us but it's disturbing the kids now. I'm also 7 months pregnant and worried about it disturbing the baby too.

The issue is, I don't want to start problems with the neighbours. If my DD becomes close friends with theirs it could cause problems and make things awkward. At the moment we are friendly but not friends exactly (we are very different people so don't think we would gel anyway!)

WWYD?

*live there.

Apologies for terrible grammar there!

Invite the mum round for coffee at about 8pm so she can hear her elephants and the banging and shouting for herself?
for you op,this is not what you need when preparing for your new baby

It's a tough one.
I'm sure she doesn't realise that you can hear them so clearly and would probably be mortified if she knew she was causing a disturbance (I know I would be).
Maybe as other poster suggested invite her for a coffee in the evening and let her hear it from your perspective! She may be shocked to realise how thin the walls are (or how much noise they make) and it could be the wake up call she needs to tone it down a bit.
That way you won't offend her by telling her directly but you will give her the chance to hear it for herself!

Sadly I know so many next door neighbours who started out as friends and then stopped speaking to each other due to fall outs over noise etc so I think you're right to be cautious.

Hopefully she will realise for herself and things will get better for you.

Thanks for your replies.

The issue with inviting her over is that she contributes a lot to the noise (shouting at the kids etc..) so she definitely wouldn't get the full picture.

I definitely don't want to cause any animosity with the neighbours. Especially if our DDs become friends, even if we don't. I also don't want to do anything passive aggressive like turn the TV up or bang on the wall (some other suggestions from RL people).

It definitely a tough one but I may have to bite the bullet and just say something.

When they start hearing a newborn, the penny may drop...

Simply tell them that you can hear the noise very late at night, and would they please be quieter? It could be that they are so inconsiderate/loud/stupid that they don't realise how loud they are.

The bloke next door to me, 65yrs old, has for the past 2 YEARS shouted and banged about late at night, almost every night. When the weather was very hot the other week and we had all the windows open, the noise was even worse. By 1am, I'd had enough and went round there - he'd been drinking and was ranting to himself. I told him we can't stand the noise until the early hours any more. He denied it!

The next day he came round, apologised, said he must have been sleep-walking! He hasn't done it again since (3 weeks now) and we still chat about anything else.

Tell them it's late, you all need your sleep.

I don't think they realise how loud they are. They don't seem like bad people so I very much doubt any of it is on purpose and you're right, would probably be pretty mortified if they knew.

I mean, we aren't saints. My kids can be loud and I can shout at them sometimes but this is during the day. Never that late at night. For some reason it seems to be late at night that it's worse with them. I can only guess that they are battling to get their kids to bed each night. In which case I do have sympathy for them in that respect. But the more my kids are disturbed the less sympathy I'm going to have.

I'm not confrontational at all so I'm gonna have to syke myself up to say something and probably have to practice first

We had to do this with one set of neighbours. Next door had a series of relationship break ups with the occupants leaving within a few months of moving in. We swore the house was jinxed at one point.

Generally we heard very little from any of them, but one family were like a herd of elephants. We managed it by apologising if they could hear us and claimed we had had a night if moving stuff up and down the stairs.... And asking if everything was OK (after a particularly loud night of them thundering up and down the stairs and yelling). Just a quiet chat over the garden fence. It made it obvious we could hear every word, and every step, but without intruding too much.