We live in London in a flat in a very peaceful area. A family moved in upstairs six months ago. They have two small children (around 6 and 3) and rent the flat. All day, every day, the children run across and jump up and down on our ceiling (to the extent that it feels as though it may fall in at times). It sounds as though they are playing football and wrestling, or similar. This takes place from at least 7pm until very late - even after midnight this week. We have tried all of the usual friendly channels (knocking on the door to introduce ourselves (including to the children), explaining the issue, and asking them to try to reduce the noise to acceptable levels; polite reminders via text when the noise is particularly bad; contacting the landlord of their flat). The response is the same each time: a shrug followed by comments that these are “the normal sounds of family life”, there is nothing they can do, and we must not understand children, etc. To the contrary, plenty of our neighbours are families with small children and they are great neighbours. They are sometimes loud but it is intermittent and some noise is of course to be expected in an apartment block. More recently, the noise from upstairs has increased further and one of the children sounds extremely distressed daily - often wailing and sobbing, including at after 11pm. The children stay up exceptionally late, always seem to be indoors (given the continual noise), and there never seems to be any parental attempt to intervene in the running and jumping or occupy or console the children. I have started to wonder if we should be concerned about the children’s welfare.
Is this “normal family life”? AIBU? Is there anything that we can do?