Help - other people's screaming children; what to do?

[Bessie123]

I live in a terraced house in London. Our street is quite noisy before midnight, but I usually get up for work at around 7.00, so I can go to sleep around 12-ish, avoid the noise on the street waking me up, get 7 hours, and that is fine.

A couple of weeks ago, our neighbours told me and dp that they are swapping bedrooms with their children (2yrs old and 3 yrs old) so that the children can have a bigger room. The children's new room is on the other side of mine and dp's bedroom wall.

The swap has obviously happened because I have been woken up before 5.00am 3 times in the last week by the 2 year old screaming for his mummy. The parents now sleep in the back bedroom the other side of the house and can't hear anything (I assume they can't; our back bedroom is v quiet and quite far from our bedroom).

I haven't been able to get back to sleep after the 2 year old's screaming has woken me up. I have no children, but am expecting my first in Feb and am more tired than usual anyway at the moment. My reduced sleep from the early wake up calls is making me exhausted and it's interfering with my work.

So, my question is how to deal with this: should I say something to the parents next door (and if so, what), or just put up with it? The neighbours also have a 7 month old baby, but her crying hasn't woken me up before; I can only assume that it is the 2 year old's stronger lungs that are the problem.

All advice welcome.

I'm not really your neighbour

but would you like a practice run at confronting me about toddler waking early?

The original post wasn't particularly selfish but later ones have come across that way.

Disturnbed sleep? Afecting work? Oh come on! I amnaged to work (whilst pg tewice) with a disabled child who slept 3 hours a night and needed cosntant sup[ervision- and it was a responsible job too (have no idea what you do BTW- not saying yours isn't)

seriously, only advice is to buy ear plugs (Superdrug travel section) and deal- it will happen to you sooner than you realise!

ACtually, I wonder if Bessie's neighbour is here

Bessiesneighbour, know what you mean...My 4th dc is now 3 years old, and 40% of the time wakes me up far too early. sometimes 5am or 5.30. But that's a piece of piss compared to the year or so he'd wake (from about 14 months onwards) at 4.30 am, having often been up in the night too. If Bessie had politely suggested moving him to another room, or even MENTIONING that she'd heard him once or twice, well....

.....

yes dragon, having read them now, i agree.

Time will out, i remember our boss saying he didnt see why his life had to change just because his wife was having a baby. ROTFL, i can still see me and my friends now, almost rolling around the floor with tears streaming down our faces belly laughing at the poor sod!

5 hours sleep? Thats quite a high expectation with a new born, i take it the op doesnt plan on returning to work then. Will definately not be able to cope. My dd is two and five hours is my average unbroken sleep. She used to feed three times a night until she was at least six months. Oh the joys of motherhood.

Given that you now know how disturbing a child can be I'd sound proof that wall - perhaps with board and some sort of insulation, in preparation for your own. you coudl always tell them in passing that you plan to do so so as not to disturb their kids. Honestly, complaining won't achieve anything other than bad feeling and when you have your lo you may be grateful for the odd favour. You can still double glaze a listed building to cut out the late evening noise and it is hardly their fault if you can't get back to sleep afterwards, frustrating though I'm sure it is.

So what you need to do is :

Speak with local councillor / police re antisocial noise by students / youths in your area.

help yourself by getting earplugs , sound proofing your home.

Take a couple of days off work if necessary .

DO NOT speak to your neighbour about it but kjeep on good terms with her - you WILL need her when baby comes along .

Take the advice that people on here have given.

Come back to the thread when your baby is born and tell us what is is like being on the other side of the fence or wall so to speak .

I think all the posters on this thread should cut the OP some slack. We all remember what it's like before we had children! Before Ds1, I was the most self entitled, self absorbed pedantic perfectionist controlling nightmare. I thought having children was a breeze, and that people who couldn't control theirs were selfish. I remember judging my neighbour on her boisterous and cheeky 4 year old, thinking "Mine won't be like that". He's not. He's worse.

And you know what? I learned, when I had ds1, that the world does not in fact owe me a thing. Ds1 taught me that there are more important things than 'what I want', and Ds2 taught me that Sometimes Children Cry.

Pepole learn. The Op is pregnant, not a state best known for rational and measured responses. She will learn.

Colditz, we've tried to explain but she's having none of it.

I'm sure that we all wrer like this before we had children and if we had made some commenst like the Op has made eg - SAHM must be able to nap in the afternoon or my work is being jepadised etc et then we would have had the same response.

We may have been like it and we were proabbly laughed at aswell. But we now know better.

no yanbu, how bloody annoying, poor you. Hope the child stops crying soon. Buy yourself some earplugs.

i sympathise with bessie. before children (actually no, not before, when i only had the one, who was a terrific sleeper) i would have felt exactly the same.

im a mardy cow when im pregnant. when i was pregnant with dd (my second), i had just started my maternity leave when i had new neighbours move in. understandably they were doing DIY but i was trying to nap, (sleeping at night being a thing of the past). pregnancy hormones, tiredness maybe, and after a week of bang bang bang one day i turned my tv up so loud it made everything in the room vibrate just to make a point. i was SO angry i could have strung my new neighbour up. unreasonable...they are quite entitled to decorate their house in the daytime. and i know its not the same thing, but my point is, my reaction was totally unreasonable and possibly definately quite very childish.

however. on the other side (after i had dd), when you've had a child who just wont sleep (and/or as mine was, tantrums every day, most of the day), it is easy to scoff at the person complaining (in this case bessie) because five hours sleep sounds like a luxury. and they have no idea what its like to be so tired you cant keep your eyes open, with no chance of a nap..at all. you cant get away from your child. people who dont yet have children dont know about this .

i dont think bessie is unreasonable in feeling the way she does, unreasonable perhaps in saying she's going to mention it to her neighbour. i do think when she has her own baby she will understand. not nice for her to have to put up with, but equally crap for the parents who are also trying their best to get a crying child to sleep at night.

when my dd was doing this, if my (childless) neighbour had come around to complain there would have been a row im sure

I really don't think you are being unreasonable. Having kids and suffering yourself doesn't give anyone the right to expect the rest of the world to share the pain in my opinion. I think a responsible neighbour should do what they can to minimise nuisance whatever the cause. Their children, their choices, their duty to avoid inflicting on others even if they are at their wits end themselves.

Obviously some things are harder to control than others - a newborn baby for example - just cries. And what the others have said is true - you make be the one causing nuisance in a few months time and no doubt you'll feel sensitive about it on top of being really tired yourself if people complain to you.

But at the end of the day I would speak to your neighbour if it is making you really cross and stressed. Yes, she's probably knackered but that doesn't make her feelings and sensitivities more important than yours. Yes, she may not respond particularly well and yes, you may shoot yourself in the foot if the situation is reversed in a few months. But you have no duty just to suffer other people's children in silence.

I speak as a parent of a 2 year old and am 7/12 months pregnant with my second so I know both the tiredness of pregnancy and the exhaustion of an early waking toddler at the same time. And I think all this competitive tiredness and smug "just you wait" is irrelevant to your rights to expect consideration from your neighbours. It is their problem not yours but it is being inflicted on you.

Speak up - but also get some ear plugs!

That's exactly right. It's not ok for them to inflict their woes on you. I don't want to have to suffer anyone else's kids waking me up, I have enough problems with my own and I certainly don't think it's ok if my children wake anybody else up in the night either.

Annoying kittywitch, but whether she can do anything about it is another matter. Also, comments like this:

"the issue is their moving a crying child into the room next to mine and it consequently allowing me very little sleep when they must know I can hear him"

Don't really do the OP any favours. I have sympathy for her but to be honest, having the joys of a bad sleeper myself, I have more sympathy for the parents.

I don't think your neighbours did it on purpose bessie.

this is it though, how is mentioning it any help at all?, they already KNOW!

believe me, if they had found a way to stop the child crying they would have already have done it for their own sanity.

and when it was MY child keeping me awake at night, i felt bad that the neighbours could probably hear it (paper thin walls here) but i was more concerned about us.

as i said, i can understand bessie feeling the way she does but there is no easy solution to the issue of getting kids to sleep.

why cant the lodger sleep in that room anyway?

Just because something is annoying kittywitch doesn't mean we can't choose to be understanding about it. Plenty of things in life are annoying- but no doubt we 6all^ cause equal annoyance to eother people without necessarily being aware of it, and its the not always mentioning it and trying to be understanding / there but for the garce of God etc part that keeps us all ticking along nicely.

Quite apart from what can practically be done about it there seems to be this feeling that the parents deserve more sympathy here - (perhaps coming from posters who are feeling sorry for themselves due to lack of sleep.) I just dont get it. Yes I would feel sorry for them but THEY created (quite literally) the problem. An innocent next door neighbour who is being made to suddenly suffer from something is totally out of her control is surely the one we should feel for.

If I bought a really noisy dog that barked all night keeping me and my neighbour awake it would be dreadful for both of us but it would be my neighbour who had cause for complaint and "well I'm suffering more" wouldn't be a valid response in my view. And if I moved it into the garden outside my neighbour's bedroom window so it didn't disturb me as much I think the neighbour would have every right to be extremely pissed off.

And before anyone leaps on me for comparing a dog with a child remember I HAVE a 2 year old and am pregnant and shattered. It's just an example of a difficult to control noise nuisance.

But kitsilano- the aprents may not be aware that they are causing Op to wake. I often worry about how much my neighbours can or cannot hear but as they are nice (well one is, other just doesn't talk to us but thats coz they fell out with our landlord not us) they dont mention it if theyc an hear us.

I can hear my fat, grumpy 60 year old neighbour having sex as well- I don't mention it, I put the duvet over my head, pull faces and wait until its over.

Thing is, although the child's noise is the last straw , it sounds as if the whole enivironment (living in an area which is noisy until the small hours) may not be conducive to a pg woman getting sufficent sleep let alone a baby/small child. Moving room as a temporary measure may help ease the stress of lack of sleep short term , lodger or no lodger. I can see why it gets the op down but don't think the neighbours should necessarily be put in the wrong.

Peachy - all the more reason to say something - nicely. But loads of posters on here seem to think that mentioning it would be an outrageous, selfish and insensitive thing to do for fear of hurting the poor tired mother's feelings.

Sorry you have to listen to your neighbour having sex - do fat grumpy people sounds worse on the job than thin attractive ones?!

The point is that even if she mentions it, what can really be done? Just cause the parents more stress about the fact their child isn't sleeping well. They are not doing it on purpose. Its not like saying "could you turn your music down" or could you not do the hoovering at 5AM. Or even, "could you not have so much fat, grumpy sex please, its affecting my career".

No, its the imagery it creates (obv its the one that doesnt like us- were it our other equally old neighbour we'd be going 'good for him' LOL)

Nobody knows for sure why child ahs been moved- maybe dad is in the room with that child because marriage is on uppers (would explain why youngest not heard if with mum in otehr room) or something?

if it were something that was unsolvable i'd say have a polite word but be understanding- but seriosuly a pair of ear plugs would do it! Esp. as in all likelihood in a few montsh neighbours will have same isue in reverse. babies ime are not the quietest.