Loud DC and unhappy neighbour. Would you move?

[YourMintReader]

I moved in 6 weeks ago. Within a week, the neighbour had complained about noise levels from 4.30am in the morning. First with a note through the door, the second time I got a phone call from Housing Association. Quickly resolved when I explained why.

Understandable, but there’s nothing I can do. This is from loud shouting and vocal stims.

She has now complained to the Housing Association that I am letting my son play out for hours on end, screaming. And has added he screams foul language. Quickly proven otherwise by me by emailing over countless documents that mention he doesn’t speak a word.

He does scream, happy and sad screams and different times. But I am absolutely not allowing him out ‘all day’

He goes to school 8am to 4pm return.

His weekend schedule is 4/4.30am - Awake. Downstairs around 5.30am latest. We might leave the house for about 9am. Possibly 2 hours of respite carers out the house for a couple of hours with them.

He would spend about 2 or 3 hours max a day in the garden. Inside no later than 6pm.

My neighbour has also got 2 children, 12 and 15. I have never heard from them but they’re older.

It’s a really small new build development and I think I and one other house are the only housing association tenants.

Would you look to move? I would be against it but cannot see a solution if it doesn’t stop. I can’t feel so worried in my own home.

Bloody awkward as there just isn’t many houses so you can’t blend in at all

I’m well aware of that. We did well today, 4:50. It’s a huge improvement on the 1-3am we’ve had all week.

But I still maintain that nobody is entitled to never encounter something they don’t like, even if that thing is a disabled kid doing something beyond their control.

Are you OP?

I agree, we aren't entitled to never encounter anything negative, and I think we all do because that's life. But I do think we are entitled to not be woken at 4.30am indefinitely. Babies and toddlers are temporary and I think everyone can accept that during the night more easily. OP's son is possibly going to do this for what - decades? Yes, the neighbour's have a right to not deal with that for even ten years.

OP’s son may do it for the rest of his life, ours certainly looks like he’s going to, and he’ll always need somewhere to live.

There are steps you can (and should) take to mitigate it as best you can. However making it go away indefinitely is likely impossible, and everyone deserves a home.

This might not be possible but can’t you take him out first thing? Would he go in the car & this time of year maybe go to the park to get rid of some of his energy?

I can see that your life is difficult. But I would struggle with the noise that early in the day. I think I could cope if he woke at 4.30 but I knew you might take him out first thing so I could go back to sleep.

Where is his Dad - does he not go to stay with him? It sounds like you are single. Do you have other children in the house?

Everyone deserves a suitable home and if you are waking people up at 4.30 permanently, it's not a suitable home.

OP's neighbour deserves a home and it's not really 'home' if you can't get basic rest. Maybe she can work with OP and a disability advocate to provide help to get them a suitable home? I know there might be a wait for that, but it would also relieve OP of the stress of a neighbour who might do who knows what as a coping mechanism.

I come back to what I said earlier - suitable for who?

I don’t believe anyone chooses their house based on what their neighbours might be like.

We chose this one based on the room sizes, the layout, the outside space available. We’re fortunate to not have a load of equipment that has to fit somewhere, so weren’t limited on bedroom choice, but he is on the outside wall of a semi detached. Unless you’re deaf, I’d imagine you’d still be able to hear him.

We’re also fortunate to be able to both work and have reasonable funds available to give us better choice.

If you don’t have the funds or facilities for a detached property with all the things you need, especially with OP having limited choice because she’s in HA property, you have to look at what is suitable for your family.

You can’t take into consideration what neighbours you’ve never met may or may not have been previously through, want or prefer. You just need to house your kid in a suitable place for them.

I think when you have the kind of circumstances where your child is waking up the neighbours at 4.30, possibly for life, you do need to look at whether your way of living makes a home suitable or if it will be an unfair imposition on other people.

This is harder when you are in a HA property but I think OP could leverage the neighbour as part of advocacy to get moved to somewhere more suitable. It's not suitable for OP to have to deal with neighbour's who are aggro due to sleep deprivation. That can do things to people.

I suspect the neighbours will find ways to cope, because they will have to, and those ways may negatively impact OP and her son, but the neighbours will be past caring about that.

Jesus, it’s not a “dated opinion” to not want to be woken up at 4.30 every single morning by loud screaming. FFS!
Thats so dismissive of the torturing effect this will be having on the neighbour and her teens. It will be ruining their lives!

It does seem that the OP wants to resolve the problem at least which is always a good start. The entitled idiots saying it’s tough & the neighbour has to put up & shut up are the problem, as I said further up thread I have known a similar situation & the good thing about HA’s is if you cause enough trouble for the disruptive tenant you can get them out especially if you own. Multiple calls to various agencies over a period of time will become too much for either the tenant or the HA & they’ll get moved or move themselves so probably better to talk & resolve rather than ignore.

As someone said earlier, the HA may not have an abundance of suitable and detached properties available.

The market rent here for a detached house, with 3 beds, would be somewhere around £1800-£2500pcm. Having a reasonable sized garden would bump that up even further.

I don’t disagree that the neighbours might get difficult. I don’t believe difficult is the right way to approach it, but they might.

But, unless you had either those funds available or the HA could magically find somewhere of that kind for you, you’d be a bit stuck and in the same position everywhere.

Yes, there might be a wait for a suitable property.

I didn’t bring that into it other than in reply to the poster suggesting that it’s a lack of resilience on my part to be affected by it. I am not lacking in resilience was the point I was trying to make, as I’m sure you could get from the post, not that it’s a related problem.

No matter how resilient anyone is. Listening to someone else’s noise constantly and being woken up at 4am every single morning then having to do whatever they need to is bound to test someone’s ability to be resilient.

Why do you keep saying the neighbour is a “tosser” when she’s having her life and her teens lives ruined by sleep deprivation? Does empathy only go to OP - not to the neighbours who have to put up with this too?

Lack of resilience??? Good god. I'm pretty resilient, but in those circumstances I know I would crumble. Sleep deprivation is torture - and the having no control and the stress of just waiting for it to start ... It's never happened to me and I pray it never does. But I know that I would go from absolutely fine, as in no history of depression or mental illness or anxiety or anything, to properly suicidal in those circumstances. How you can think that long term sleep deprivation in those circumstances isn't enough on it's own to break someone is beyond me.

Quite. It's tosser-like to have no sympathy for everyone affected.

It does. There is absolutely no question that sleep deprivation is stressful, exhausting and debilitating for everyone who has to deal with it.

The point about resilience, was that if it is destroying your MH, your MH likely wasn’t great to begin with. That’s not a targeted thing against you, but we can’t be holding disabled children responsible for someone else’s trauma, or how much push they need to reach the edge.

It would also be very difficult to know if your NDN was mentally vulnerable when you accepted a house for your child.

There’s been a lot of big language on this thread. Suffering, victims, disabled children are problems, life ruining, destroying.

I genuinely think that that’s hyperbolic. I would never refer to someone being awake and existing in the only way they know how as life ruining.

I can well accept that it’s exhausting. I’m exhausted 😂. But if it was ruining my life, I’d assume my life was in a fairly precarious place to begin with.

Anyone would be pushed the edge with ongoing severe sleep deprivation. I don't think that's a resilience issue.

I think in the long term, you’d actually adjust to it and wake up at 4am regardless of whether the kid did.

Not to say you should, or that you’d be happy about it, but that’s just how body clocks work.

There’s a difference between being unhappy about something that is bad, and referring to it as ruining your life. I struggle to comprehend the idea that a disabled child could reasonably ruin your life.

I also think that telling the parent of a disabled child that their child is potentially destroying someone’s existence is a really low blow.

Those of you with kids wouldn’t want a horde of people on the internet telling you how inconvenient they are.

The thing is, other people's needs are not less important than the disabled child's needs. The disabled child's needs and rights are not more important the right of the neighbour's teen to have a good shot at their exams without having that compromised by 4.30 wakings all the time. It's not more important than the parents next door who have to go to work and can't catch up on sleep during the day (or their clients who need them at their best). The don't have more rights than the neighbour's to good health, which sleep is imperative to. To say the neighbours will just adjust to waking at 4am is incredibly selfish.

Nah sorry my experience is not as you’ve said, we can agree to disagree though 🙂

I do sympathise with every parent who’s struggling I really do. I’m just sharing my experience from the other side. Until you’ve experienced it it’s hard to know how you’ll feel (yes, you have it on the other end but it’s your child, not the same!)

I think that’s a crazy idea.

The needs of disabled people are higher and therefore more important than mine, I’m not disabled. I don’t need adjustments to live my life, I can tell people when I’m hungry, I’m able to go to the toilet.

My needs cant be as prevalent as anyone who is disabled, because I’m not. Isn’t that just basic human compassion?

Well it would absolutely ruin my life. There is no way I could adjust and sleep deprivation makes my life unliveable.

And how ridiculous to frame in that way. Yes if a child is causing it then a child would be ruining my life. Or rather their behaviour would and the fact that they are suddenly living next door in unsuitable housing. Of course it's not deliberate, but that doesn't make things any better.

No. I have a disabled child and their needs are important, but not more important than anyone else's.

For example, they want to run around the doctor's office because it makes them anxious. I could throw my hands up and say, "Stimming. Too bad for all you sick and anxious people, deal with it." Instead I considered the needs of other people and found another way to meet my child's needs that didn't impose on other people's needs at all. Because they matter too.

It’s not ridiculous to believe that disabled people aren’t ruining your life by existing, and their parents aren’t ruining it by having to live somewhere.

It sounded like OP was going into her son’s room at 4am to do just that, try and manage the situation. She also would like him calmer at that hour.

Like most, we’d like patience when we’re trying to manage those situations in our house, or in the community, not to be told he’s in the way or inconvenient. It’s already difficult enough without her needing to read those things about her son.

There’s also different between want and need. I absolutely don’t believe we should let children do what they want at the sacrifice of someone else’s needs. But I don’t think we should not meet their higher needs either.