To defend my kids over noise given lockdown restrictions?

[Needsomegoodies]

We live in a terraced house, with wooden floors, so I appreciate noise carries. My children are not ‘naturally quiet’ and can be quite active and yes, sometimes they drive me mad thumping but only ever briefly, they are always asked to quieten down and consider the neighbours and are just regular excitable children. They are excellent sleepers so make no noise between 8pm and 8am and we’ve lived in our house since before the kids and no one has ever complained. Both my husband and I are WFH and home schooling the children, 8 and 5, which is hard. I spent the morning working with my little one to get her school work done at the expense of my own work while the older one worked online. I then took them both out for a walk for an hour at lunchtime to burn off some energy, then tried to juggle the afternoon working, helping older child finish school stuff, while 5 yo did colouring and played a quiet game alone. At about 5pm they were given permission to chill out and watch tv so I could get on with some work and DH went to shops to get stuff for dinner. They were quiet to start with but then started playing a game and jumping. After about 10 mins I went in and asked them to stop (which they did for all of 3 mins..) and after another 10 mins there was hammering on my front door and new (moved in just before Christmas) neighbour stated ranting at me about ‘excessive noise that was constant and relentless’ when they were trying to work. I explained that although the kids had been noisy right then, they’d been quiet most of the day and he claimed, no it’s constant and you need to stop the noise. I explained the challenges we are all facing and that it’s hard on the children but he seems to think they still shouldn’t be jumping around or making noise. At the end of the day. During a lockdown. His daughter of about 20 then joined him claiming she understood its hard as she’s young too but I replied no, she’s not 5, she has no idea. The kids are stuck at home and can’t see their friends so surely they can’t be begrudged some active play with a sibling from time to time, even if it’s a bit noisy?!

I’m massively stressed and exhausted and this has upset me but I don’t think I’m in the wrong here.

Or AIBU?

I am not an ignorant asshole who cares only for themselves.

What I am is a person who tried to be nice to a neighbour of this type. He ended up often abusing me in the street over noises he had imagined and was caught on his way to my home with a can of petrol in hand in the middle of the night.

YANBU! These are trying times and yes it's hard with normal noise when working but if you're quiet 8-8 what more can they ask for? Try not to worry.

I voted YABU as 20 minutes of relentless jumping and screaming is really unacceptable. Children can be taught to not screech and there are parks to run around in and let off steam.

On the other hand, I do sympathise and it is tough for everyone. Your neighbour might have asked you politely the first time and been a little more tolerant.

I do think the onus now is on you to keep your children quieter. At the end of the day, if everyone is working from home and all allowing a lot of noise, the environment would soon become pretty intolerable.

@SlippersForFlippers

Having a noisy family next door was the reason we moved house, it's awful having no control over others noise and the people being noisy doing nothing to help the situation.

If I'd have lived there much longer I'd have ended up on some kind of medication.

Same here. I had to pretty much start again mortgage wise to move to to a detached house but it's been so worth it. My neighbour's 3 children run and jumped on their laminate floor most of the day and when they wasn't doing that, they were having screaming competitions in the garden. Literal competitions as to who could scream the loudest. Parents never ever stopped them despite us talking to them and asking for some compromise. Never expected silence but I really don't think that the parents realised how bad the jumping about traveled through to us. My house would shake from it. But they ended up doing us a favour as we are much happier now. We were lucky to be able to find a way to move which I appreciate many other people can not.

Ignore them OP, we have 3 kids and they are naturally exuberant, which I like, although I tell them off if they shout or scream etc, you know. I love playing 'IT' with them etc, but am mindful of not being too loud. But, you know, they are kids. Like you, it isnt as if they make any noise past 7, as we have a quiet hour before bed. If people don't want usual household noise, then they should live in a detached house. Of course one has to be mindful of neighbours, but it's not right to make your kids walk on eggshells.

Tough one, I agree kids make noise and you shouldn't have to tip toe around your house. When my kids get a bit too noisy I remind them we have neighbours and to quieten down. My neighbours don't have children and have never ever complained, but I do worry that they can probably hear my children, if they had children of their own they probably wouldn't hear my children over their own so much. We have wooden flooring with rugs - it helps. My neighbours, like us work from home too so I try to be considerate of that.

Threads like this are SO annoying!!! I just don’t understand it. You live in a terraced house FFS!! Of course there is going to be noise! Of course there will be things that neighbours do that piss each other off- but it’s a terraced house! Are people all supposed to live in silence and never move too quick for fear of a floorboard creaking.

Silence is a LUXURY- if you can’t afford the 3 bedroom detached house in the middle of a field then it’s tough!!

It’s normal to hear noise. They are kids playing, teenagers listening to music- mum and dads doing DIY, grandads washing the car and getting the entire street wet- it’s life- that’s what happens when you live in a street, especially a terrace!!

We had similar in lockdown 1. Having looked into it, normal amounts of noise (including children playing, which will naturally be fairly loud) is fine as long as in sociable hours.
It did annoy me as the issue is / was clearly lockdown - both we and the neighbour were at home 99% of the time, when normally we wouldn’t be, and so she hears us more. When she bought the property she knew a family lived here and knew, or should have known, that as a period property that insulation isn’t really up to scratch.
We have made some fairly minor concessions and obviously we’re not trying to annoy her but I was pretty sure that the law was on our side. It also looked like councils were getting a lot more noise complaints during lockdown 1 than normal and were giving most of them short shrift. I mean, it really is a choice between children making a normal amount of noise at home or at school or in someone else’s home etc...

Tell them to fuck off. I have 3 DCs 8, 5 & 3 also in a terrace house with wood floors. You do not have to keep your children quiet in your own home. Obviously there is a point you tell them to keep it down but you should not have to tip toe around your own home.

it's really hard in a terraced house with young children. If they wanted quiet they should have moved into a detached.

@dialsquare we're in a detached too now. We had good neighbours on both sides for years, the original family with children moved out and were replaced with the noisy family.

I don't think either you or your neighbour were unreasonable but by your own admission your children are not naturally quiet so after 3 days perhaps he just snapped.
On the other hand if you live in a terraced house you have to expect that neighbours are going to make noise. I often hear my neighbours and I expect they hear me but we all accept that's the consequence of living in a terraced house.
Unfortunately with the crappy weather your children aren't going to be going outside much. If he complains again just apologise and shut the door. He can't actually do anything.

I’ve been on both sides of this.
I’ve had really boisterous kids, one who loved to tantrum loudly and jump everywhere, who were a nightmare to keep quiet, and I kept on having to apologise to the neighbours. And on the other side of the coin I’ve had noisy kids and dogs living next door who have driven me nuts.
Put carpets or rugs down and be firm about them jumping constantly on the floor, that’s what we did with ours.
This should resolve itself when the kids go back to school and they go back to work.

There is a difference between wanting silence and allowing periods of absolute screeching or long drawn out really noisy behaviour. Neither expectation is reasonable.

People have to expect children to be children and if they live in adjoined houses to hear noise. They cannot expect silence because they are working from home. But at the same time, people with small children cannot expect it to be acceptable for children to be excessively loud in terms of screaming for long periods or playing in a really loud manner and location of the house that will certainly impact the neighbours.

Compromise is needed by everybody. When someone comes round to raise the issue, they have probably suffered in silence for a period and really struggled with the idea of coming round. You need to be willing to hear them and acknowledge them. It’s not a battle where you have to defend the full behaviour of your children - you need to acknowledge the issues whilst also pointing out that it is difficult.

If the request is reasonable...for things to be a bit quieter, or for specific things like screaming competitions or banging the adjoining wall to be moderated, rather than an unreasonable request for silence, then you should listen and look to see what you can do. And it would be nice to think that they then would acknowledge your efforts too. Compromise and empathy, rather than demanding unrealistic behaviour or defending unacceptable levels of noise is the way forward to good relations.

Parents are immune to a large extent to their own kid's noise.

We live next door {Victorian terrace~never again} to kids who are actually very good as kids go , but crashing and jumping especially along hallways and up and down the stairs transfers appallingly easily.
I was visiting my elderly neighbour once {Sadly RIP now}, and heard a sound like a gazillion rat traps being rattled at once.

Yet it sounded oddly familiar, but louder.

It was DS riddling the stove out ...

Doreen, bless her said it reminded her of her childhood, but the noise was louder in HER house than ours.

Kid noise becomes exhausting, fast.

In wooden floored houses it is far worse as nothing to dampen the Whumps, bumps and thumps.

Running and jumping is very, very loud.

Noise really carry’s with wooden floors. Put carpets down, make sure your kids really are not making any noise. I wfh all the time, it’s very frustrating in the summer when kids are playing. I let it go unless they start screaming, but thudding in the house will carry and it’s only right you manage the kids to stop the noise

All I can say is with a toddler and a baby I’m so glad I don’t have neighbours

They sound like bullies, you need to shut them down asap.

Get your DH to politly inform them that you do not want him coming round again about this issue under any circumstances.

I'd find that kind of noise intolerable. Wooden flooring, kids and confined spaces do not mix.

Agree with the suggestions of rugs, at the very least. Neighbour will be more sympathetic if they know you're making an effort.

@SlippersForFlippers
I imagine you felt the same relief and calm us we did when you moved in. People don't realise the mental toll of noisy neighbours until they've experienced it. I'm not taking living noise. We had that too but the excessive noise made me hate my home. I used to dread coming home. Lived there for 23 years but almost danced down the path when I handed over my keys. It was bought by two young brothers who are probably quite a bit noisier than we were!

I hated living in a terraced. The walls are paper thin, I used to hear my neighbours flushing the loo and plugging something into the wall. They liked me to begin with but then I had a baby and they started drilling and hammering whenever she cried. I moved out as soon as I could.

The responses are very polarised. People with young children failing to understand just how irritating their children are to the neighbours, and people who like a quiet life not being able to put up with the noise from their neighbour's cildren.

@jclm

it's really hard in a terraced house with young children. If they wanted quiet they should have moved into a detached.

Probably they can't afford it. No one would live in a terrace if they could afford a detached, especially in older parts of towns and Cities.

I'll never buy a terraced house again, though. Far too sound sensitive, and I also consider my neighbours, so no hoovering after a certain time, and the old washing machine sounded like a cement mixer with bricks in it, so could only use that in daytime.

Consideration is needed on both sides with living joined to other houses.

Not to be nasty, but how does lockdown impact a 5 year old? Presumably their lives are pretty similar to normal as they’re not at school

Why can’t people see that there is a middle ground with noise....there is no necessity to defend your family if they are being really loud, only their right not to be silent?

The trouble is people naturally become defensive int here situations. They feel offended and annoyed when a neighbour raises this kind of thing.

Some neighbours are unreasonable and complain about every tiny noise and expect silence. It’s not on. But mostly, people don’t complain about every little noise, but really loud, on-going noise, and they are not asking for unreasonable silence, just some moderation of it and steps to reduce it to more reasonable levels. This isn’t an unreasonable request and shouldn’t be met with aggression ( lots of comments to tell neighbours to Fuck off n this thread).

Personally I think the right response from Op would probably have been a brief apology (no need to grovel or go overboard) and acknowledgement of the issue, along with pointing out how difficult it is in lockdown and winter time. It would also help to ask if there are specific things which the neighbours find particularly difficult. I’d finish by saying that we certainly won’t be able to keep them totally quiet, but don’t think they are asking for that anyway, but we will look into rugs in the floor or stopping the particular activity which is causing the most upset. Finish with a smile. Then actually do something to bring about an improvement, without going too far or trying to achieve more than is possible. And move on. It’s not necessary to deliver silence, just to acknowledge and deal with issues which can be dealt with...wood floors without rugs, kids banging the walls or playing screaming games etc. No need to stop them playing or talking or singing or even shouting some of the time - it’s all normal.