Neighbour's autistic son, sleep deprivation and health/housing impacts.

[Anonymousaurus]

I am in a desperate situation and would be grateful for any advice anyone may have. I think I've included everything but please feel free to ask if I've missed any details. Sorry it's ended up so long, there wasn't really a brief way to give full context.

I live in a mid-terrace house which I privately rent, my two children (10 and 12) are with me 50% of the time and we have lived here almost 5 years. Last August, a lady bought the house next door and moved in with her autistic son. I would guess he is around 8, but it's hard to tell as he is still in nappies. He is non-verbal and I believe also visually impaired. He makes loud, vocal stimming noises almost constantly whenever he is awake.

For context as I know I'll be asked, I know he is autistic because shortly after they moved in, while I was out for the day, someone came into my garden and added an extension panel to the top of my fence. When I came back home and went outside, the child's grandmother came out to the end of my garden and told me they'd had to do that and affix it from my side of the fence because her grandson is autistic and he climbs things.

The issue I am having is that the child wakes frequently almost every night, and very often for several hours right through til morning. I am woken almost every single night by extremely loud banging which I believe to be his bedframe slamming into the wall when he jumps on the bed. This also sends vibrations through my floor so I can hear and feel it. He also bangs on the window (I have seen this from my garden), rattles the door (I think he is locked in overnight for safety) drags things across the wall, bangs toys into the window and shrieks and cries. It goes on for hours. I very rarely hear anyone go into his room to settle him, but whether they do or not makes no difference to the noise.

I have tried various types of earplugs, white noise machine, having a fan in my room, opening the window and nothing even remotely dampens the noise. Using ear plugs only puts me at risk of missing my alarm and not getting my children to school on time, it certainly does not help me sleep.

Often after a bad night I finally drift off to sleep, only to be woken again shortly after by very loud banging any time from before 6am and this continues usually until well after 9am. Obviously this only applies to weekends and school holidays, during term time I have had to drive my children to school (20 mins away) on no sleep whatsoever on many occasions. I'm very worried about having an accident.

The very bad nights where he is awake anywhere from between midnight and 2am until my alarm goes off are around once a week on average, though sometimes there are clusters of nights like that one after the other. He also takes several hours to go to sleep each evening, with loud banging, crying and shrieking beginning at around 6pm and usually not stopping until after 9pm. I have to delay putting my own children to bed until about 20 minutes after the noise has stopped in case we wake him and it starts all over again. I am woken up by banging at least once pretty much every night, but the anxiety I experience around going to bed is now so severe that I often can't sleep for hours even if he makes little to no noise after he has gone to sleep.

I have tried sleeping in my lounge but as our bedrooms and the lounge are on the adjoining wall, all of the noise he makes travels up or down wherever he is and it is basically just as loud down there. It sounds as though he is inside the walls in my house during the day. When he plays in his room, there is scratching, tapping and banging along with vocal stimming which seems to go on all day. He goes into the garden when it isn't raining but the vocal stimming seems to be even louder when he is out there and he also throws stones and knocks them on the fence which is also noisy. I get absolutely no peace unless I put music or white noise on, but this has to be so loud to drown him out that it's not really relaxing.

On top of this, the boy's mother has a partner who got himself a Rottweiler puppy at the start of this year. He obviously cannot have the dog with him while he works, and so he drops the dog off at my neighbour's house in the mornings, usually when I am leaving to drive my children to school and the neighbour is putting the child into the taxi to go to school. The dog barks a great deal throughout the day, especially when he is left on his own which seems to happen at least once a day for various lengths of time, and it isn't collected until around 5-6pm. This means I cannot catch up on sleep during the day.

I have lupus which is a chronic autoimmune condition which causes inflammation, chronic fatigue, pain in my muscles and joints and many other symptoms. Inflammation is triggered primarily by illness, lack of sleep and stress. I went off sick from my job because the sleep deprivation was so bad I could not function, and was enevtually sacked at the start of this year because I could not provide a satisfactory answer when asked when I thought my health would improve, because the neighbours aren't going anywhere. I am now at risk of eviction as I have defaulted on my rent.

I have tried all available avenues to get support and advice but it seems I have absolutely no rights in this situation. My landlady isn't responsible for the noise which I do understand, so she won't consider soundproofing as it would cost her money and reduce the value of the property, she also won't negotiate my rent. As the noise is coming from a disabled child as opposed to 'nuisance noise' the police aren't interested. My landlady advised me to report my neighbour to the council, which would require me to take recordings over a period of time and submit them for review, after which the council may send a noise abatement order to the property. I am skeptical that this would achieve any meaningful resolution as the neighbour is already aware how this is impacting me and I highly doubt anything can be done to stop the child from doing what he is doing. The mother smokes weed during the day, I can smell it before I've even opened my car door when I get back from the school run and it's seeping through the wall into my kitchen at the back of the house, and it seems she is able to sleep through or ignore the noise for hours. I believe the child is being locked in his room and ignored throughout the night most of the time, but the police and social services don't seem to think this is a problem.

I had to contact social services on a couple of occasions during the summer. On one occasion I could hear the mother screaming and swearing at the child to shut up for a sustained period of time from around 3-4am. This was during the very hot period when everyone's windows were open at night and I expect everyone in my terrace heard. Later that week, after being kept awake all night, I went to get my cat in from the garden at 7am and saw the child had removed his nappy and was standing on the windowsill fully naked slamming on the glass and shrieking out of the top window. Behind the row of terrace houses where I live is a public thoroughfare which many people use to access the high street and train station, so a lot of people could have seen him as he wasn't let out of his room for a further 2 or more hours as is normal on non-school days.

A couple of nights ago I called the police at 2.30am because the banging and crying was far louder and more persistent than I'd ever heard before. They attended the property, knocked on the door but my neighbour didn't answer, so they left. The noise continued for several more hours. At 4am I spoke to the officer who had attended the property and he told me that unless they are aware that someone is definitely at risk of death, they aren't authorised to break down the door or even knock more aggressively. As they couldn't hear the noise from the front of the property (his bedroom is at the back of the house) they left and would not come back. I explained that the screaming and banging had been going on for over 2 hours and I was concerned it was far louder than ever before but was told that doesn't constitute an emergency. The following day the boy still appeared to be in his bedroom all the way through to the evening. I called 101 to report that I believed the child had been locked in his room since the previous evening but they weren't really interested.

I am at my wits end and have been contemplating taking my own life. I have PTSD from highly traumatic birth injury when my daughter was born, and when I am woken in the night by the loud banging, my nervous system reacts as if someone is breaking into my home. I have started experiencing chest pains during the night for the past 3 months and I have frequent panic attacks during the day because I get absolutely no break from the noise whether it's the child or the dog. I have posted polite requests through the neighbour's door twice, the first time asking if she could possibly move her son's bed away from the wall, and the second time requesting that she ask her partner to make alternative arrangements for his dog during the day if he is unable to take it to work with him, but neither of these have been responded to even though I provided my number and no action has been taken to change anything as far as I can tell. The noise has actually gotten worse.

My parents are my guarantors and since I defaulted on my rent they have been required to pay this for me. They are now pressuring me to give notice to my landlady so that they can get out of this contract, but I have nowhere else to go because without being able to get my health back on track, I cannot return to work.

Moving in with my parents is not an option for me because I would be nowhere near my children and I do not have a good relationship with them. We are essentially estranged and moving in with them would almost certainly see my already very fragile mental health declining even further very quickly. They agreed to be my guarantors five years ago as I was financially stable and this sort of situation just didn't even cross our minds. We have barely seen each other since then.

For the first time in my life I am receiving universal credit and am currently applying for PIP under the advice of several people I've spoken to at the DWP. I had never previously considered that I might be eligible for PIP nor had I even wanted to investigate this as I had been managing very well as a single parent working full-time from home until this family moved in. I feel incredibly guilty to be receiving benefits of any kind but unfortunately the impact of the sleep deprivation that this child has caused has been profound and I see absolutely no way of improving the situation while I'm still living in this house. I cannot leave the house to go to another private rental because my parents will not agree to be my guarantors again, which I can perfectly understand but it does sting as I did nothing irresponsible to get myself into this situation. I cannot afford to live anywhere else in this area anyway now that I am relying solely on UC, and so the only private rentals I would be able to find would likely be one bedroom flats or studios.

I have looked into how I might get myself on the social housing list but it seems that the only way to do this while privately renting is to be at risk of eviction. Since I have a guarantor, I don't think that my landlady is going to go down the eviction route, as legally she can continue to demand that my parents pay the rent for me and they are obliged to do so, otherwise she can take them to court.

I know the child is disabled, but I am now a burden on the state when I never needed to be, and there seems to be absolutely no route to a way out of this situation for me, that can't be right surely? Am I missing something? I do understand that his mum's life must be very difficult indeed, but she does not seem to be intervening when he is waking during the night at all for whatever reason, or even trying to stop him from banging things into the wall. I do not understand the rationale of moving into a mid-terraced house and not even giving the new neighbours a courtesy knock on the door to explain what they are going to be in for. I have tried so hard to be patient and understanding, it took me more than 6 months to raise any kind of complaint with my landlady or the neighbour because I wanted to be compassionate to their situation and give time for the child to settle, but the sleep deprivation has gotten worse and worse as time has gone on and nothing is being done about it, this is simply not sustainable.

Does anyone have any advice at all, for any part of my situation or the whole thing? I am honestly at breaking point and not very far away at all from harming myself.

What a horrendous situation, OP. I’m assuming your children aren’t also being kept awake for hours on end each night, so their rooms are in a ‘better’ position in the house. You need to start sleeping in one of your children’s rooms immediately and every night so you can start to restore your physical and mental health. I get most 10/12 year olds won’t be thrilled at sharing with mum through the night but it’s much better than the alternative where you continue to decline.

Are your DC sleeping through when they stay, OP?

Try council list but ask for one bed flat might come up sooner
Private rent a one bed kids can sleep in lounge when they stay or you can
You cannot solve your neighbour issues (eg they should get ss help for a soft safe bed space) but as a renter you can move . You can find a way

How is someone talking about a hypothetical choice they 'would have' made a fact?

It's a terrible situation, but you rent so why didn't you give notice and move out before you lost your job over tiredness

Oh come on! OP knew the effect it was having on her for a long time.

What did she expect would happen? The child's disabilities would go away? She could get them kicked out of their own house?

She could have opened up a dialogue with her neighbour to find out exactly what the situation was and if anything was likely to change seeing as it was affecting her so much before it got of the point of losing her job.

She said the neighbour had done what she asked in moving the bed so it doesn't sound like she's unapproachable. She has more of a reason to try to avoid the OP than the OP has her.

Oops didn't mean to post twice.

If he’s being locked in the room overnight this may be because he can easily escape from the house. My autistic DS can open doors so we have to hide the keys. It may well be for his own safety rather than neglect, I wouldn’t jump to that sort of assumption straight away.

It does sound challenging for you though obviously. I remember the programme neighbours from hell years ago, I think most people end up moving house because it takes years to resolve noise complaints if at all. Since this is a disabled child making noise it’s unlikely the council will be able to do anything.

This scenario seems to pop up from time to time on here and there's always a lot of posts saying what the neighbour should do, or what the poster should do but it all boils down to you can't make someone else do anything. You can't make your neighbour make her house soundproof so you're not impacted, she can't make her child go to sleep and stay asleep for a reasonable stretch of time, you can only really focus on what you can do.

Terraced houses are a nightmare for sounds and bumps travelling anyway, even when you don't have autistic neighbours and an autoimmune condition.

If she owns, she won't have a landlord you can turn to and ask if there's any modifications they can make to the property.

You could ask the landlord if there's any way they can install soundproofing on your side. We've had acoustics specialists out due to my autistic son and they've said best case scenario both houses get it done, at the very least soundproofing works best in the recieving side because that's just how acoustics work.

You can put up blankets or rugs or egg cartons or buy those temporary soundproofing panels, I think even IKEA sells them, but it won't stop the vibrations, that's just something that happens with terraced housing. You don't have to put anything up at all, but it may reduce some of the impact and the most important thing is getting your health back to some sort of stable baseline.

In terms of your financial situation are you receiving any benefits and have you checked if you're entitled to any? Once you've got some financial freedom you have a lot more options.

You could log the noise and submit a noise complaint but it's highly likely nothing will be done. They can't really penalise someone for having an autistic child and they can't force them to move to a detached property where they won't impact anybody else as it just isn't realistic.

This is some journey, which starts with

"Honestly OP, I have a lot of sympathy for you

then moves into I actually think you harassing her with constantly calling the police/social services instead of trying to build up a relationship with her to find out exactly what the situation is, is really nasty.

I think you should have realised you needed to move before it got bad enough that you lost your job tbh.

I can't find much sympathy there, other than the appearance of the word itself

the second bolded part involves a lot of reality inversion,

finally topped with a unhealthy serving of scolding about something that can no longer be changed

My question is why?

followed by is it true, is it necessary, is it kind?

I don't really care what you think she should have done. My point was that commenting 'well I would have made different choices' is unhelpful, which it is.

You have answered your own question, you need to report it to the council and monitor the noise.

My advice is move..theres very little that can be done..if the child taxis to school, they are most likely in a send school? Parents are probably reasonably well informed in terms of melatonin. I dont think a noise complaint would get far.. its not like playing a speaker all night.

I really really feel for you but if they own and you rent, the easiest option is the flat. It does sound like she tried to move the bed. By all means contact ss but the threshold for support is ridiculously high, even with safeguarding concerns. Your neighbour is not going to want to help things if you're phoning the police. Go round and knock. If still concerned then phone.

I would advise you to speak with your neighbour about a disabled facilities grant. LA dependent but could get wall padding or installation but even IF that was awarded, itd be 18 months - 2 years most likely. Or even a safe sleep bed as he wouldnt be able to knock on the walls.. could even suggest a mattress on floor. Also speak to her about DLA (although probably already claiming) as it could help her pay for adjustments to support child (which youd then benefit from).

Give your landlady notice. It might prompt her to do something about the soundproofing as she will struggle to re-let it - there is no way on earth I would rent somewhere if a rottweiler was barking loudly next door when I was being shown around the house.

Serve notice to your landlady. If you can’t find a private rental within your budget, present yourself to the council as homeless on the day you hand the keys back (bring the kids). This is different to going on the housing list and you will be given temporary accommodation immediately. It won’t be ideal but better than what you’re in now. Ignore any comments about how you’ll be classed as ‘intentionally homeless’. This requires it to be judged as reasonable for you to have stayed there and it clearly isn’t but either way it’s irrelevant; the council still has to house you since you have children and health problems.

I think you should stop beating yourself up OP about being on benefits for the time being.

The safety net is there for such times as these.

And I'll wager you've paid plenty into the system.

X

The noise must drive her mad too.
Moving is your only option.

Have you tried contacting the child’s school with a welfare concern? If social services aren’t doing much it’s possible the school will. If he goes to a special school there are probably only a few catering to primary aged children with severe learning difficulties in your local area so if you’ve seen the colour of his uniform you can probably work out which school he’s at by looking at the local websites.

I would also try having a conversation with your neighbour or maybe even offer to help her push social services for a better solution. She should be entitled to adaptations for her home such as padded walls or specialist equipment, such as a safe space bed, if she cannot keep her son safe at night or if he is waking her and the rest of the house. Social care won’t just hand these things over so she may not know that support like this can be available if she fights for it. The school might also be able to help her with this. Ultimately If you can’t move then your only hope really is to try and help your neighbour to get the help she should be entitled to, obviously I don’t know if she will be receptive to this or willing to be open to school/ social services etc about how tough things are but if she was then adaptations to the home as well as options such as overnight respite would probably make everybody’s life, including this poor child, easier.

Could you convince the landlady that getting sound proofing would actually be in her best interest. If you leave she’s very unlikely to rent the house out if potential tenants hear that going on. Even if she manages to rent it out no one would stay long and she’d constantly be having to find new tenants.

I would move, it sounds horrendous. And you can’t afford it. So you are going to have to find something cheaper, even if it’s really crappy. From there, you can focus on sorting out benefits and job and moving to somewhere better once back on your feet. It sounds awful - I have huge sympathy.

I’m so sorry you’re in this situation. It sounds absolutely horrendous. I think the silver lining here is that you rent. It would be so much worse if you owned and were trying to sell. You need to try to recuperate enough to move. I hope some of the advice given here by other posters helps.

I’m also shocked that your introduction to them involved people being in your garden installing fencing tops. I would find that really intrusive and I can’t believe they didn’t firstly knock on to let you know when and why it would be happening and ask permission to enter your private property.

I viewed a house at 3pm, 1930's semi-detached, deathly quiet

On the day of move in, the TV on the party wall above the chimney breast came on at max volume around 7.30pm,

As in the sound levels in my dining room from both (yes, 2) of their party wall-mounted TVs were insane,

Elderly couple, didn't give a shit, nor their care workers or children...despite many complaints and I started writing out a complaint to the local authority, but stopped because the optics were just not in my favour

went on for 18 months like that, including 2am.. often featuring WWII films

Stopped when he died, he breathed his last, I breathed a sigh of relief,

I still called an ambulance for the bastard when I heard him calling through the wall for help. He was lucky I hadn't put my noise cancelling headphones on for the the day...

So, no a quiet house on viewing day is no guarantee of a quiet home, nor the stereotypical assumption that elderly neighbours = quiet neighbours

It is available on prescription. This may be the case if social services had no involvement after the reports.

You need to move, though I appreciate it would have been far easier to do so before you lost your job.

Would your parents consider helping you move if it meant you could look for work again?

Continue to report to social services if you believe the child is being neglected, but the police and council are incredibly unlikely to do anything about noise from a disabled child. It's like complaining that a baby is crying... it's not something that he can help as awful as it sounds for you.

Also re: the guarantor thing, I rented privately for years and never had a guarantor (several different properties/ landlords). Is this completely necessary?