Neighbour from downstairs doesn't stop complaining about my 2 year old.

[HipsterMum]

We are a family of academics with 2 boys who are 5 and 2 years old. We are currently renting a lovely flat in a large block of flats where the walls are quite thin. We can hear a lot happening in other flats and unfortunately, our neighbours from downstairs can hear us too. We are not particularly noisy, my husband is at work full time, my eldest child is at school and after school he is usually quietly playing with his toys. My youngest is still waiting for his place in the nursery and as I am currently working from home, I look after him in the house. He is not particularly noisy, we don't allow scooters, big cars around the house but he did just discover running so he does sometimes run from one room to another although we continuously tell him to walk gently. Yet he is still a child.

For 2 years we had no problem with any neighbours. The couples living next to us are lovely so is the elderly gentlemen who is completely understanding of some extra noise especially during school holidays and weekends. My kids are always in their bed at about 6.30 reading and then straight to sleep. They wake up normally at 7.30 am and we encourage them to do quite activities like drawing in the mornings. If they get too loud or start jumping off somewhere in the mornings for example on Sundays, we stop this straight away. They also wear soft slippers at all times.

A few months back an owner of the flat below ours decided to move back in (it was rented out before therefore we had no problems with previous people). He hasn't stopped coming up to us and knocking on our doors since. The first time he did it, we were all sick with covid for 10 days. He came on day 2 of isolation and asked us to take the kids out to the park as he couldnt listen to their little feet. When I hoover the floors at 3 pm , he starts banging. When my youngest runs to the loo he bangs. We had relatives over who we not seen for 4 years because of the lockdown and the kids were meeting them for the first time and were opening presents and being excited he was at our door at 2 pm on Sunday saying we have to tell our kids to simply stop walking because he cannot stand it.

We talked with our landlord about the carpets (we have some mats around but thats not enough) but he wouldn't pay for them and he doesn't want carpets permanently placed in this flat anyway. Furthermore, our eldest has got a bad dust allergy so carpets are really difficult, that's why I hoover quite a lot. We invested in a couple of more rugs but I don't think it will make much of a difference. He threatens us that he will continue to come and bang on our front door because he cannot enjoy his life because of our 2 year old. He says we are not being considerate of others and we should be able to tell our kids to stop because he can hear their steps from 9 am till 6 pm. But I cannot tie them up to their chairs or threaten to punish them each time they walk in the own flat. I am at my end with this man. This man suggests I tire them in the park because that's what real parents do (I doubt he ever had kids) but I cannot be with them in the park every weekend from 9 am till 6, can I? We are out most of the days and i do tire my youngest out with the scooter but kids still walk after the park.

What I am asking of all of you is what else can this neighbour actually legally do? What else can I do? My husband says I should not open the door when I am in the flat alone with the little one and tell the guy to stop this harassment. We don't mind moving somewhere else, possibly on the ground floor in the future but we enjoy this flat at the moment as it is right next to my sons school and we live a happy life here.

I understand many people don't enjoy children with their annoying little feet but bloody hell they are humans and not robots.

@OfstedOffred

He sounds unreasonable in his expectations. However I do think it's really essential to have carpeted floors with decent underlay in flats like this. When I was in flats I never lived in one that didnt require carpets in all rooms except kitchen/bathrooms. The flat we owned specified this in the leasehold agreement which isnt unusual. Carpets do muffle a lot.

She has already said she can't get carpet because it's rented and the landlord said no.

He’s harassing you. Tell him that and put it in writing and keep a copy. Also tell him that there will always be some noise from adjoining flats when you choose to live in a flat. You obviously do need to walk and will continue to walk in your flat as you wish and he cannot dictate to you when, how and where you can walk in your own flat. If the flat he is living isn’t meeting his needs and preferences that’s his problem to solve not his neighbours.

Keep a diary of the harassment and try citizens advice or legal advice if it continues.

Contact your landlord to inform them of the harassment and warn them that you may need to move out if it continues.

@Mummy1608

Yes people can work from home and still manage to be caring parents who do things with their child.

I think most people, including employers and the kids themselves, would disagree with this. Unless you do less than four hours of work a day. In which case yes you can head out to the park much more.

And no of course you don't need to be in a park 7.30-6. Just an hour or two mornibg and afternoon will tire DS out so he does quiet play at home. A nursery does as much outdoor play as that

Taking a child to the park every day twice a day for a hour or 2 would be torture! But the neighbour could take himself out everyday for an hour or 2 if he's that bothered.

Also, ignore the comments about childcare. You do not have to put your child into childcare to keep a neighbour happy (wtf?!). You’ve taken reasonable steps to reduce the sound now just live your life. It’s not like you’re playing loud music or taking up drumming!

@AngelinaFibres

Thud, thud, thud, thud ( small child's feet on floor) , bang of door, thud ,thud,thud, metal car hits wooden floor, followed by another 2 or 3, thud ,thud,thud, thud, scraping of chair feet on wooden floor, bang of fork and melamine dish hitting the floor, scraping of chair feet, clatter of box of lego bricks being tipped out on the wooden floor, scraping of a million small bricks as the perfect one is found,sound of adult and child/children's feet backwards and forwards at tidying time and then the bloody hoover starts. To you it is the normal sounds of family life. It will be nowhere near as loud to you because your furnishings and curtains will absorb a lot of the sound. The sound being transmitted down through the floor will be much , much louder . It would be a start if your husband went into the flat downstairs with your neighbour and listened whilst you did all the normal things you do. At least then you could hear what your neighbour hears.

But what is the OP supposed to do about all of this, just normal family noises - it's not like they have bought a family set of didgeridoos that they are playing day and night..

@HipsterMum

Thank you everyone for your responses. I will email the landlord again regarding the carpet installation and see what he can do. We ordered a bigger rug for the living room and both kids got rugs in their rooms where they play things like cars. I don't however think that will resolve much. Soundproofing is pretty bad in this block of flats . Right now I can easily hear people laughing upstairs and moving chairs and my other neighbour's phone vibrating constantly.

No, we are not from Edinburgh although I used to study there and absolutely loved it .

Regarding the comments that I should have arranged childcare and my son is bored and thats why he runs around like its some kind of a bad behaviour and not a normal thing for kids to do I probably won't reply to that. He can barely even talk he is 2. As I mentioned in the original post we are waiting for a place and he will be starting nursery next term.

I don't think anyone said your DS is badly behaved, I certainly didn't. But kids do exhibit attention seeking behaviour when they're not getting enough attention. His mum being right there but not able to interact properly (because wfh) is no doubt confusing and frustrating to him. I don't think I'm saying anything controversial, most parents will recognise the behaviour I'm talking about. I'm a teacher and if I bring marking home and try to do it while in sole charge of dd, she does go a bit wild running about, pulling at me and even grabbing the papers.

I'm trying to be helpful when I say it really is you working from home while trying to care for a toddler at the same time. Can you afford a babysitter to take him to the park for a bit each morning while you're working? Or do you have family who can help just till nursery starts?

@AngelinaFibres

Thud, thud, thud, thud ( small child's feet on floor) , bang of door, thud ,thud,thud, metal car hits wooden floor, followed by another 2 or 3, thud ,thud,thud, thud, scraping of chair feet on wooden floor, bang of fork and melamine dish hitting the floor, scraping of chair feet, clatter of box of lego bricks being tipped out on the wooden floor, scraping of a million small bricks as the perfect one is found,sound of adult and child/children's feet backwards and forwards at tidying time and then the bloody hoover starts. To you it is the normal sounds of family life. It will be nowhere near as loud to you because your furnishings and curtains will absorb a lot of the sound. The sound being transmitted down through the floor will be much , much louder . It would be a start if your husband went into the flat downstairs with your neighbour and listened whilst you did all the normal things you do. At least then you could hear what your neighbour hears.

Yes, this is life. What if someone was in a wheel chair or a parent with a hyperactive child with behavioural challenges. Those things are not done on purpose to annoy neighbours they are a part of life. Same as when I had dropped a plate at 2 pm and he was banging on the ceiling because I decided to hoover the broken pieces.

God I hate unreasonable people like that! Nothing drives me mad more then people being irate about normal behaviour. Clearly he has never actually dealt with an awful neighbour.

Maybe get a doorbell which does video at your door to your flat (not the house/block) or start recording his visits. You might need to put a notice up. But start getting evidence - date, time, what he says etc. try to keep yourself safe.

I had something similar, an upstairs neighbour was really not right. He used to call the councils noise team but they always said they couldn’t find anything - used to check my washing machine and all around my flat! He once banged on his floor/my ceiling so aggressively that the light fixture fell down. He was the real nuisance! Plus he never had the balls to come round, just used to communicate by beating up his floor.

Really hope it gets resolved OP.

@spectre1356
On the contrary, I think it's torture to a toddler to only have a wfh parent giving them partial attention all day every weekday. At least an hour at the park once or twice a day then wfh the rest of the day would be a compromise for him

@Loginmystery

As you are a family of academics then he must be the one in the wrong. Did you say you’d bought a couple more of rugs? Maybe get a couple more of acoustic underlay.

Maybe she’s doing her PhD rather than a paid job. Anyway, how she manages that is not relevant to her issue.

Every time he bangs on the ceiling I’d bang back. If he comes up and shouts I’d shout back. 🤷‍♀️ He’s being a dick.

@AngelinaFibres

The thing is Op, your neighbour has no control over the quality of his life in the flat he owns He cannot do anything about the ceiling in his flat. Your landlord absolutely can do something about the floor in yours by fitting quality underlay and carpet My father was very allergic to dust. He took antihistamines all his life. Your son could ,presumably, have the same. I don't live in a flat anymore ,hell would freeze over before I bought one. I live in a detached house now, however , during first lockdown, my neighbours bought a collie dog. It was bored. Some days it barked for hours on end. Some days it did a pattern of a few minutes frantic barking, a few minutes quiet, all bloody day. It wasn't my dog. I couldn't control its behaviour. Do not underestimate the stress you are causing your neighbour. The only thing he can do is to bring the noise to your attention. He cannot stop you doing it and, if normal walking from one side to the other, makes noise , it must be driving him insane. In our case the dog barking was bad enough that we could tell them that we would go to the council and start proceedings. At that point they started walking and training their dog. She no longer barks. I have a greater insight into why neighbour disputes end in murder. It really does start to send you round the bend.

What can Op do if the landlord is refusing to put carpet down? I would never ever buy a ground floor apartment just for the noise disturbance alone and it's daft if him to do so if he's so bothered about normal everyday noise.

I had similar issues a few years ago.

After treading on eggshells and desperately trying to get dc to be quiet all day it made me unwell.
Someone pointed out we weren't doing anything wrong, were not being anti social.
So the next time the person banged on my door I told them to fuck off and shut it again.
Solved my problem 😊

The man downstairs needs to raise it to the management company who can go after the landlord to install carpets if that is what the lease requires.

Some of the comments on this thread🙄 OP has explained why she mentioned they are family of academics. If she said she was a cleaner and DH a bus driver nobody would bat an eyelid.

As for the advice that OP should explain to her son that he must be quiet because he doesn’t live in a semi-detached house…yep a 2 year old will totally understand that.

The neighbour sounds mad. Ignore him OP and if he continues to knock on your door advise him that you’ll be reporting him to the police for harassment.

@Fiefofum

I think it is relevant that they are academics, as in they will tend to be quiet when working from home, rather than a stonemason or an online dance instructor. Some people are just chippy for the sake of it…

Stonemason You wouldn't one of those working from home as a neighbour!

[quote Mummy1608]@spectre1356
On the contrary, I think it's torture to a toddler to only have a wfh parent giving them partial attention all day every weekday. At least an hour at the park once or twice a day then wfh the rest of the day would be a compromise for him[/quote]
Where have I said I work from home full time? Where was it mentioned that I do not take my child to the park ? God almighty I put so much information in the original post and some comments straightaway went in the direction of 'your child doesn't get enough attention therefore he runs around'. My child has got an hour of screen time that I use to work, he also takes a 2 hour nap. I take him to playgroups and playgrounds and he often loves playing play doh so much that I can easily squeeze in another extra hour of work. My work is flexible and I finish the rest of it when my kids are asleep. I still do not understand how this should help me deal with my neighbour. I cannot promise him my son won't he walking around the house or ever drop anything ever again.

While I can see it must be annoying for him, this is just the normal noise arising from everyday life with children. And while I agree that there should be legislation re sound insulation, it wouldn't be retrospective. He is BU, and it's bordering on harrassment.

It's unfortunate that the flat isn't carpeted, as that would make a big difference (my local council has a rule that tenants in flats above the ground floor must have carpets for this very reason). If you were minded to do something to reduce the impact of the noise, interlocking rubber tiles might help.

For a couple of years, I lived in a flat in a block with solid floors and no insulation, and it was nightmare. If you didn't have the radio or tv on, you knew when the people upstairs were eating their dinner, because you could hear the clink of cutlery on plates, and if someone flushed the lav in the night, it was loud enough to wake you up.

I do have some sympathy with the neighbour. I lived in a GF flat with absolutely crap insulation and soundproofing. All 10 of the flats had wooden floors. The people above me, thankfully only had theirs as a holiday place (was in a coastal town) and brought their GC, who were I’d say about 5-8.

They ran about/played football/had scooters /got those bouncy balloons on elastic. It drove me round the bloody bend! We were 5 minutes from a beach (probably less) so why they didn’t go there to play was a mystery. I’d lived in a GF flat prior to this but as it was new it had decent insulation and we couldn’t really hear neighbours.

YANBU.

If he doesn't want noise, tell him to go buy a detached house.

Your toddler is just being a toddler.

Legally, he can't do anything. I lived through absolute hell with downstairs neighbours (albeit we were just a lone couple at the time without DC). The council installed a recording device to monitor the noise levels coming from our flat. It was found that their complaints were a nonsense. We've since rented the flat out to 3 different tenants and have non stop phone calls about the noise. We've blocked their numbers and the council are well aware of their nonsense complaints - they've been told not to contact the council to waste their time.

You should welcome a recording device from the council to show that no excessive noise is coming from your property. And to shut him up. What a dick.

@AngelinaFibres

Thud, thud, thud, thud ( small child's feet on floor) , bang of door, thud ,thud,thud, metal car hits wooden floor, followed by another 2 or 3, thud ,thud,thud, thud, scraping of chair feet on wooden floor, bang of fork and melamine dish hitting the floor, scraping of chair feet, clatter of box of lego bricks being tipped out on the wooden floor, scraping of a million small bricks as the perfect one is found,sound of adult and child/children's feet backwards and forwards at tidying time and then the bloody hoover starts. To you it is the normal sounds of family life. It will be nowhere near as loud to you because your furnishings and curtains will absorb a lot of the sound. The sound being transmitted down through the floor will be much , much louder . It would be a start if your husband went into the flat downstairs with your neighbour and listened whilst you did all the normal things you do. At least then you could hear what your neighbour hears.

And then do what? Learn to hover? If they're making normal noises and not doing anything untoward then it's very unfortunate if it's disturbing the neighbour but there's nothing OP can do and, to be brutal, it's not her problem. What he's doing is the equivalent of living somewhere with a lot of traffic noise and then spending your days standing by the street screaming at the cars.

Not sure what your job title has to do with it tbh. Anyway, I have voted YANBU because he is clearly being unreasonable and can't expect complete silence. I will say though, stomping is SO annoying. The flat above me has a child around 7/8 and the sound is awful sometimes. I never say anything and I never will because I get that she's a child and I also want to live happily alongside my neighbours and they are nice people. But it doesn't take away from how annoying it is.

Where have I said I work from home full time? Where was it mentioned that I do not take my child to the park ? God almighty I put so much information in the original post

Whew OK sorry but I was misled by your op which I did reread before posting the last couple of comments. You said you wfh. You also said your neighbour requests you take your toddler to the park in the day. You also said in the daytime you're usually at home alone with ds. So yes, I misinterpreted all of this to mean you are stuck at home wfh most of the day

She didn’t mislead you.

I think it would be lovely if you took up the saxophone for a couple of months. When you quit, he'll be so relieved he won't mind the everyday noise anymore 😄