I hate the sound of children running

[MoreThanEnoughSoFar]

I'm expecting to get a lot of angry answers, but I need to rant before I start screaming. Because I really get tense when I hear children running indoors with their shoes on.

Some years ago before I had a family, I lived alone as a student with my dog. One summer I was plugging for an extra exam I had to take in August and knowing it was summer, I realized there would be more noise. I just didn't realize how much noise.

The child upstairs would wake in the morning at 8, put on hard sandals and run about until 6 in the evening. His parents sat outside the flat on the shared patio, drinking and smoking, and he would run back and forth to speak with them in 5 minutes intervals. At 6 in the evening I would be a nervous wreck, which I didn't understand, until I realized I had listened to him run around for 10 hours straight.

It wasn't until I stood one morning outside my front door and heard a sudden noise from upstairs that gave me a stomachache, that I realized I had to move.

Some years later I moved into a student-flat with a large family next door. The children slept in late and was put to sleep at 9, and you could hear the screams and crying through the wall. Worse, they rarely came outside to play but used the flat as a playground. The children also were allowed to wear shoes indoors and I would be able to hear them come running through the flat and then kick or crash repeatedly into the wall, giving me a scare. I complained, I reasoned. The noise just escalated. Eventually I moved.

Now I'm about to leave this flat we live in now. It's a lovely terraced house, really, with a small garden in a quiet place, but our neighbours are the loudest family I have ever met. And I mean so loud that when you walk past their house you can hear them scream and shout though doors and windows are locked. The children also sleep in late until 9-10, then immediately run around, throw things at the wall, (it sounds like they do parkour against it) and every weekend they are allowed to play in the house to late into the night while their parents entertain guests.

And yes, they also run around with shoes on inside. I can handle most noises after having kids myself, but the sound of children running indoors with shoes simply triggers some sort of latent PTSD with me, and I can't relax. I was in contact with the previous tenants, and they admitted that they moved since the noise was too much. So we're moving too. And I just hope we aren't moving to a similar situation.

But my question is this: AIBU to expect parents to only put shoes on children when they are actually going outside?

I don't think you are going to get loads of angry answers.

Most people don't enjoy noise from others in their own home. You've had some noisy neighbours and it's irritated you.

I don't know anyone who wears shoes inside their house I don't think. We don't but that's so I don't have to clean the floors as often.

People are entitled to live their lives in their own houses and some people are noisier than others. I've had far worse neighbours than ones who let their children wear shoes in the house and run around that's for sure.

From what you’ve said, it sounds like you are unusually sensitive to some fairly ordinary noise (you mention ‘latent PTSD’) which is obviously very difficult for you. And yes, your current neighbours sound like a pain in general as evidenced by the previous tenants moving to get away from them.

However, I also think you perhaps need to understand that the fact that one noise in particular bothers you to this extent is really your issue rather than other people. If you live in a flat or a terrace/semi-detached (I do too!) you will almost always hear your neighbours. You just will. And children running around is part of that. You are unusually sensitive to it, but that doesn’t mean your neighbours in every place you live have to modify normal behaviour to accommodate your particular sensitivity.

I also do not think that most/any small children get up and put outdoor shoes on the moment they wake and continue to wear them until bedtime without leaving the house, so I’m honestly not convinced that the children of all your neighbours over the years are actually wearing shoes anyway.

I’ve spent two weeks living in an apartment in a Scandinavian country where everyone removes their shoes at the door - it’s considered weird, rude and unhygienic to wear shoes in the house there. But I could still hear children’s feet in the apartments above and next to the one I was staying in.

I do sympathise because quite clearly your current neighbours are awful and you are obviously distressed. But I don’t think you can expect to live somewhere without ever hearing children’s footsteps from next door or above and it wouldn’t be reasonable to ask for that.

Maybe you could try a pair of these:

www.loopearplugs.com/collections/all?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=trgt_uk_search_brand_loopearplugs&gclid=Cj0KCQjwi7GnBhDXARIsAFLvH4mCMhkH8dCvS00YEzB3FvlYZ1rCS4km_iW9Mp_zB0a15O15EL4UjXMaAnE9EALw_wcB

I don't think I'm fairly sensitive to noises. Outside our garden is the communal playground and the noises from there never annoy me, so no, the problem is not with me being overly sensitive. This excuse usually comes from parents who don't bother with controlling their children and then try to normalise their noise.

I do have a huge problem with children running amok indoors, and parents who don't consider that they have neighbours. And my only issue here are children being allowed to have shoes on inside. I don't quite know when that became an accepted thing. In my home we removed them when we came home.

Only if I could superglue them to my neighbours' children's feet.

Are you sure they're wearing shoes? Mine sound like elephants and they're always barefoot (we don't live in a flat thankfully!)

I've tried to get them to wear slippers, the youngest will in winter but eldest won't even wear socks if he's at home

This would drive me crazy. My son bouncing a ball of the balcony sends me into a mental frenzy and sometimes I feel like crying! My husband thinks I'm crazy 😄 k

Did my nursing training in an old hospital built in the first war. On a night shift I swore I could hear a child running down the corridor. I went out to see who it was but there was nobody or nothing there. Happened again a few weeks later.

I mentioned it to the sister on handover, and her comment was, “ oh, you’ve heard it too then “.

I later found out that it was the children’s ward where they treated polio.

They wouldn't have necessarily been wearing shoes. Children's ligaments, gait and joints aren't fully developed yet which is why they can sound really heavy footed especially when they run.

Unfortunately flats can be really bad for noise as they often have poor soundproofing. I hope your new home is quieter for you.

From what you’ve said, it sounds like you are unusually sensitive to some fairly ordinary noise

I agree with this, because you have run into the same problem over and over. We all get mildly annoyed by our neighbours' noise, but you seem to find it unbearable in a way others don't. The repeated themes of shoes in the house, playing indoors and rising at 9am (presumably in the summer holidays?) suggest to me that you were raised or are strict about no shoes indoors, children being quiet in the home and early rising being the "right way" to live, and get anxious when people aren't behaving as they should.

I remember my parents chatting with our neighbours once about the noise we could hear from each other's houses, which wasn't much at all (semis).

They mentioned that the only thing they heard was someone going up and down the stairs, which were on the far side of the house to the shared wall. They clearly thought it as my dad, and were highly sceptical when we explained that no, it was my tiny, ballet dancer little sister. Kids can stomp like nothing.

YANBU to ask your neighbours to take some steps to keep the noise down, like asking the children to wear slippers indoors. But that won't necessarily make a huge difference, and children running and playing in their own homes is normal, family noise (as is crying at bedtime).

I don't let my kids run around indoors, shoes on or not. I don't think you're unreasonable to find that irritating.
I do think maybe you're hypersensitive if you're experiencing issues in every single property.

If you’re this sensitive to noise, you need a house to yourself rather than a flat.
I’m exactly the same and now I’ve got a detached house the peace is blissful.

I think when you develop anxiety or phobias around totally ordinary things or events, the onus is on you to get help or deal with the avoidance.
Met a girl on a station once who was frightened of birds. Don't know how she ever left her house. Find it hard to feel sympathy for this kind of thing.

I think you need a detached house.
I agree that kids shouldn’t wear shoes inside. But I also think all these kids who’s running traumatized you were probably barefoot.
Kids are all a little bit different. Some are very quiet. But lots are just uncontrollable little energizer bunnies and there’s no way you could successfully get them to not run inside without duct taping them to the walls.

They might not be wearing shoes. Young children step heavily so it can sound like a herd of elephants even when they have no shoes on.

It's difficult because it is just one of the hard things about living in a flat, but I can totally understand that hearing it all day every day is wearing.

This. The children aren’t wearing shoes indoors. The op has said that they don’t go outside. No child, let alone all of the children of all the multiple noisy families she’s apparently lived next to, have got up in the morning, put on their shoes and then spent the entire day doing parkour against the op’s adjoining wall.

I also suspect that these dc may not have shoes on.
One family, yes I could see it but repeatedly having this issue suggests that maybe you struggle with noise?
Kids are noisy and flats often aren't well insulated from noise.

You've either been incredibly unlucky with the neighbours you've lived near in the past, or you are incredibly sensitive to that type of noise - we all know that once you tune into a certain annoying sound, it's sometimes impossible to 'unhear' it.

If finances permit, I'd really recommend Bose noise cancelling headphones, they are brilliant.

Yikes. This is definitely a you problem.

How do you know the child was putting on hard sandals? It's a bit weird to be paying so much attention to our neighbours that you know the exact waking times of their children.

I don't think I'm fairly sensitive to noises. Outside our garden is the communal playground and the noises from there never annoy me, so no, the problem is not with me being overly sensitive.

I'm sensitive to some noise and not others. I'm a teacher and I barely even notice the noise in a classroom but I can hardly concentrate when there is music playing in the background. I was at the opticians a few weeks ago and she had the radio on and I couldn't focus on her questions at all and I was feeling really irritated. But thirty children I don't find annoying at all.

Me too. My three have managed to just walk indoors. Not that difficult really.