Neighbours say they can only 'try' to control their child.

[sleeplessnights24]

I live in a new build. Everything has been ok, but the tenants upstairs have a 5 year old boy who doesn't stop stomping.

Running in the afternoon/normal hours is one thing, but this is in the early hours when people are clearly still asleep! It also happens in the middle of the night too...?! Surely a 5 year old can sleep through the night...? Also, why run if you're up that late?!

I noted the hours it happened. 5:30am, 5:40am, 6:30am - and weirdly 12:30am, 1:20am and 4:20am too. That's just in the last 3 weeks. On weekends it started at 6:50am and 5:40am. We are not just talking about brief periods of noise. It is often intermittent. The worst was 3:50am - which was intermittent until about 4:20am. Then again at 5:20am. Then at 7:30am. That night I didn't sleep at all since 3:50am.

Initially, all communications were fine. I only spoke up once I was at my wits end. I was polite - and so were they. No apology from their side though. They said they'd be mindful of the noise. Phew! I was grateful and hopeful to finally be able to sleep. I do not expect to live in silence (obviously), but stomping on your ceiling - when you're trying to sleep and it is still dark outside, is crazy.

A few months goes by... nothing changes. But because I had already complained once, I felt like I couldn't complain again... until I did.

Again, all polite from both sides. Said they'd be mindful. Ok.
Nothing changed again. Rinse & repeat. The noise - if anything - just got louder... so I spoke up again. Both sides nice and polite. They said it was 'confusing' that it was so loud. I asked multiple times if they'd like to come down and hear it for themselves as they didn't understand how it could be so disruptive. They ignored every invite to come listen.

They would say he 'only walks' on days I would be woken up in the morning - by running. They were/are defensive and looking for excuses. I get it. In many ways, I am not surprised. They kept saying they were 'being mindful' - but nothing ever changed. If the noise had reduced by 20% since I complained; at least that would be something. But there was literally no change.

I was transparent about having Bose headphones, white noise machines, etc... so they could see that I was doing things to drown out the noise from my side.

After 18 months of it happening on an almost daily basis, I complained to my building management Co. I had complained to management before - but their response was 'there's nothing we can do'. They didn't even pass on my sentiments to the owners of the flat.

This time I didn't relent - and asked them to pass/forward my email to the actual owners of the apartment upstairs. (Upstairs are renters). They did indeed forward my email to the owners.

I got a response saying the owners had spoken to their tenants - and the tenants have agreed to buy a rug and will 'try to control the movements of their child when possible'.

I took this as somewhat helpful - and was more angry that I was proven right in that what they'd done for the year prior - was nothing at all - certainly in terms of practical measures when they had told me there was nothing more they could do. Over the 18 months; there was one occasion where I (politely) asked what they had done to mitigate the noise... they didn't respond. (They have hardwood floors throughout).

For 8 weeks, they seemed to promptly stop the running in the middle of the night/early hours (which I only wanted stopped at unreasonable hours anyway) - but now we are back to square one it seems. I'm mindful of it being Winter (dark and awful weather outside) and also Christmas season, but I'm not sure why it keeps happening. They say the best they can do is 'try' to control it.

AIBU for not relenting and to keep complaining to management? The tenants have stopped opening my messages now.

I did indeed inform the LL of this. I also noted how grateful I was that for 8 weeks, we had a solution - which showed it could be done!

You’ve presented in a nutshell the worst type of parenting, topped off with a convenient get out clause. No one will dare argue if you mention a diagnosis for something….

Someone’s issues or triggers or diagnoses are their own responsibility to manage. Everyone else isn’t duty bound to put up with misery to accommodate them.

I'm sorry but first new builds are horrendously thin ceilings and walls, second some children do not sleep well at night and there's nothing you can do. That's why I would never live in a downstairs flat

Seriously though… New build flats have to meet building regulations that relate to noise transmission. The floor above should meet a certain set of acoustic requirements, regardless of floor covering (carpet or laminate). If you bought your flat and there is an insurance scheme such as NHBC, you may want to enquire with them about whether this can be investigated. It sounds like it could be a defect.

@sleeplessnights24 Thats great you own but also not great as it doesn’t give you that option! I was brought up in a house next door to a lovely lady who lived alone. My mum would always check in on her, let her know if we were having a party, make sure we weren’t making too much noise and so on. That to me is just good manners and was the norm in my house as a child so always done the same now as an adult!

I think the only option then is to raise the complaint. Things have not improved, detail times, how long, level it on a scale of 1-5. I’d try and cc everyone into one email, Landlord, council and management company. Tell them exactly what you have told us, it improved for a period of time then was back to square one. I’d think because you haven’t complained again that they will assume all is well. The more you push this then the more likely the landlord will be to fix the flooring in order to keep his tenants and not get the council involved.

Interrupted sleep is no joke and lying awake with thumping above you must be infuriating. I hope you can get it sorted once and for all.

OP - you are 10000% not being unreasonable. People living in flats/terraced houses etc HAVE to be mindful of others around them. It doesn’t matter if it’s a child, grandparent, dog, cat or flying pig!!! Just because the upstairs neighbours chose to have a child, does NOT mean everyone else has to bear the brunt of their decision!

you’ve already bent over backwards for them and they are being arseholes quite frankly. They paid no attention to you or trying to minimise the disruption their child was causing for >1 year. You’ve waited a huge amount of time, tried to help them yourself and spent your own money trying to get sleep in your own GD home at night time!

im sorry, but being mr/mrs nice guy is over. You tried and they took complete advantage of that. You’d need to document every time it happens during unsocial hours and for how long. I don’t know if there’s decibel monitors out there to document noise levels. Also take videos. Then email/phone everyone you can think of, every single night it happens. Tenants themselves, management company, owner of flat, council etc. they will soon start to take note.

I know you might not want to be “that person”, but you’ve tried everything else and they have been arseholes so screw them and their monster child.

what everyone needs to accept from this situation is that family need to move to a ground floor flat where they can’t terrorise anyone else.

I think the problem is the more you complain, the more it will become white noise to them - oh, Mrs Jones is moaning again, accompanied with an eye roll.

I sympathise as my house and back garden backed onto a house who had a child with special needs. They were nice people but their child was LOUD. I had to keep reminding myself that if I found the noise hard it must be so much worse for them.

There are no easy answers here but I don’t think repeated complaints will achieve what you want it to achieve, the opposite in fact.

@RedToothBrush

Dont be daft! The OP is entitled to want to be able to sleep in her own home in the middle of the night!!

I feel sorry for the parents, but that's their problem to deal with. They can co sleep, have a small bed next to theirs, keep the door shut. The could start with putting down noise insulation, good quality underlay & a thick carpet.

doing nothing should not be an option.

That's exactly what to do OP. Thankfully you won't get far because a child moving around inside their home is not unreasonable.

Great. Except they are FIVE YEARS OLD.

I said IF they had a condition like ADHD, not that they did, and if they did they wouldn’t even have a diagnosis to manage yet.

And not all kids sleep through the night and that is no fault of parents. Just a fact of life.

How sad you are to lack both empathy and compassion, especially as you haven’t walked in these parents’ shoes.

Yes, or they could not live in a top floor flat. Just like people are telling the op she shouldn't live in a flat if she wants to not get woken through the night.

@sleeplessnights24 everything you suggest is about them changing their behaviour to enable you to live in the way you’ve chosen.
What have you done to soundproof the ceiling?

What have you done to reduce vibration in your furniture?
What have you done to reduce noise from the hallway travelling to where you sleep?

Oh, come on.

It really isn’t easy to get a rental property. I somehow doubt they were mulishly turning down countless ground floor flats in place of the one they are in!

@RedToothBrush

no, they can stop their child running around in the middle of the fucking night. It's up to them to solve.

earplugs. wouldn't stop the thud thud thud, even if they did, some of us can use them.

you think because they won't control their child & they/their landlord won't put down insulation/ubderlsy/carpet the OP should move?? You think they should pay the high cost of selling & buying WTAF??

As someone with a hyperactive child with several diagnosis who has never slept, thunders about like an elephant and is extremely difficult you are definitely not being a dick!!
you have a right to live comfortably in your home, the odd bit of noise is obviously expected but they could own up and say they’ve not done anything because they don’t care. They could put underlay and rugs down, they could stay up with the child in his bedroom and read books/watch Netflix, they could bloody apologise!

keep complaining!

And yet it's fine for people to tell op it's her fault for living in a flat!

Spare me. It's not. As you can see from my previous posts, I've listed many things I've done - as well as answered many PP's questions on this topic.

(I think you have misunderstood on the hallway front. The hallway is inside their flat!)

Do people really believe that decent people would complain - if they genuinely hadn't tried to solve the issue from their side? I exhausted every option from my side - for 18 months - and only first initially complained - when I was already at my wits end. Not everyone in this world is precious enough to complain at the drop of a hat. Most decent people are often conflict-avoidant people too.

I have a lot of sympathy for your situation - it sounds miserable. But since you asked “AIBU?”…

1. You’ve mentioned a lot that the reason or a key reason you’re so upset is that they haven’t been more apologetic. Although I get it, I feel like that’s kind of a red herring. If you’re going crazy because you can’t sleep - that’s the issue. If you could tolerate the situation if they were being nicer about it - then I’d try to get in a headspace where you can tolerate regardless in case it doesn’t resolve otherwise. For your own sanity if nothing else.

2. Children whom I’ve lived with can be so so loud walking (not running, just walking) up above me. I think it’s possible - perhaps unlikely but at least possible - that their child genuinely isn’t running or that they genuinely think he isn’t running. It’s also possible that they have been trying some things that you don’t know about and that whatever happened during those magical 8 weeks was some sort of random fluke, not the result of something they did for a while and then switched off.

Are you absolutely sure it is the child?

My in-laws live in a new build. We stay with them and honestly there's a noise that sounds like someone is stomping up the stairs and across the landing.

I mentioned it when I said 'oh I thought you were upstairs, I heard you walking on the landing' and my MIL said - nope been here the whole time (in the kitchen). We got into a conversation about the footstep noises which they heard too.

We can't figure out what it is - but it's loud, sounds just like stomping around but it isn't. Our only guess is some sort of plumbing.

But if I didn't know exactly where everyone was I would have been certain, infact 100% convinced someone was stomping around the stairs and landing. But it was only being able to account for exactly where everyone was that I realised it wasn't.

Could it be they are running a washing machine, or perhaps their heating system flicks on and off during the night?

You'd think it you could hear a child running you'd also hear laughing or crying or a tantrum, or parents saying 'get back to bed' etc, or even multiple feet with the parents getting up and trying to get the kid back to bed.

You say for 8 weeks it stopped but then the weirdness of the timings- dunno OP something just is making me think that maybe it's worth exploring other possible reasons for the noise, no matter how convinced you are it's the kid.

Maybe the neighbours aren't doing much because they're not really sure what you're going on about. All kids wake up occasionally - but if the noise you're hearing isn't the nightly running of their child then they may think you're being a bit precious about a couple of occasions where he was up in the night. Have you given times and dates?

I'd maybe record the noise and send it to your landlord. So everyone has a reference and a time of the noise. See if the parents say - well he was fast asleep at e.g 3.20am when you recorded that.

@RosieBurdock of course it isn’t the OPs fault. But I genuinely don’t think repeated complaints will achieve anything other than make said complaints less effective. There are no winners here. It is just miserable situation for everyone.

You can do all those things and get nowhere fast.

Despite doing all the everything my son had epilepsy and suspected ADHD and while we await our referral for medication to attempt to help with his resulting sleep disorder nothing happens fast.

We're lucky we live in a house not a flat, we're unlucky he's big for his age, bigger than my 9 yr old nephew, very tall and quite sturdy and he can sound like a herd of stampeding wildebeest. We put a stop to it as fast as we can.

We had a recent spare of him being up 3/4 times a night, we couldn't get to him immediately because we were actively ill with exhaustion so if he was upset or threw something or jumped on his floor he'd have a good few seconds to do that before we got to him.

He also has screaming meltdowns at times (these worry me more, when he's screaming 'youre trying to kill ke' while I'm rinsing his hair for example I definitely worry someone will take him at his word and call social services) and weanage it by ensuring he has 3-4 hours of exercise a day out of the house on top of school, usually an after school activity and an hour long after dinner dog walk. Weather has not permitted frequently lately, I'll take him out in most things but not a naked storm or equivalent.

Those saying 'surely a 5 yr old can sleep through' oh my God I wish that were true. His brain didn't get that memo. Tonight it was midnight, after 4 hours of bath, quiet time, audiobook, guided audio meditation, coming into my bed, doing a chat about his worries, rocking him on my knee as he got upset because he's trying so hard and he just can't sleep. He's looking forward to the appointment to help too. Have you ever had insomnia? Now imagine being 5 and having insomnia and imagine how horrible that is. And AA s well as insomnia he has night wakes, normal ones and night terrors.

There will be people in flats with children like my son, I have a professional career and his conditions have impacted my ability to work as much as I used to. Caused me to have to change jobs, then drop hours. Imagine if you were working for kinum wage and didn't have the protection of being a sought after professional? Imagine if you were a single parent and al the time off etc was on you. Many women lose their jobs, their careers, become full time carers for children with SEN and then their lower income limits their housing choices. Parenting SEN children massively increases the chance of relationship breakdown too so the likelihood of ending up a single parent is much higher.

These parents do not want to be dealing with this anymore than you do. They may also allow a certain amount of running indoors because without it in winter he'd never sleep and it would be worse for all.

If you can't live with unintentional noise from neighbours just attempting to get by, move to somewhere with no attached neighbours.

I have empathy and compassion for the OP.

Keep frothing. You continue to prove the point.

This poster is being completely unreasonable OP, just ignore. I've dealt with over a decade of little sleep and much worse behaviour than this due to SEN. I would very much care about the impact this was having on our neighbours and would do what I could to mitigate that. Asking for practical steps like a hall carpet is completely reasonable, especially given you're offered to pay and I would go back to the landlord asking for something to be done about the hall.

Any expectation they can change the behaviour is unreasonable, if they could keep him asleep or at least in bed they would. You've been dealing with the sleep deprecation for 18 months, they've probably dealt with it since he was born. That's not to say you're feelings on this are unreasonable, but its likely you're dealing with two people at their wits end and maybe not coping and hence reacting in an unreasonable way.

@Workway i live in a new build and when my neighbours go up the stairs and on their landing it sounds like it’s in my house. There’s been a few heartstopping moments where I’ve thought someone is upstairs because of it!

Thank you for your response.

This is it! There's no for them to be dishonest - all it does is breed hostility. Just be honest and transparent - so everyone can come to a solution.

Let's face it. Living under kids is not fun. (That's not me being rude - it is just a fact). But I accept it for what it is. Kids make noise. Fact.

I hear running in the later hours of the mornings, afternoons and evenings. All too often I can't hear my TV over it - so I got used to subtitles. That's just one example. Another is that I take all my calls with AirPods in. You just deal with certain things - within reason!

But it's not asking too much to sleep in your own home.

If they didn't want - or intend - to do something about it this whole time - I'd rather they just say so. Don't lie for 18 months!

I do wonder if we'll ever get back to those 8 weeks where it wasn't so bad. Let's see.