Noise.

[rivka]

Several times in the last two months, we've gotten a call from the woman who rents the studio apartment beneath our house, asking us to keep Alex quieter because she is sleeping. It particularly bothers her when Alex runs back and forth along our main room, or when Alex has a friend over and they're running around together. Each time, we have taken Alex outside or blocked her in so that she can't run around.

All of these complaints have happened after 9:30am, and usually much later. Today, for example, she called at 10:30. I ran into her outside later, and finally asked what her work and sleep schedules are. She said that she works from 3:30pm to midnight, and "the earliest I'm ever awake is 11:30."

My question is this: when someone works a late shift, is it reasonable for them to expect their neighbors to keep nighttime-style quiet levels during the day? So far we have responded as though it is, and I do have sympathy for her need to sleep. But I am also starting to feel annoyed about it.

Morning is the biggest part of Alex's day - in the afternoon, there's often less than two hours between the post-nap snack and dinner preparation. Morning is when kids her age socialize. If we're supposed to be quiet until at least after 11:30, that means never being able to host playgroup. "Active play belongs outside" is a hard rule to enforce with a toddler - they tend to be active all day long, or to switch back and forth between quiet and active play in short bursts, and they need to be active even when the weather is too bad to play outside. We do go out a lot - the children's museum, the science center, the library, (if weather will ever permit it again) the park, and just for long get-out-of-the-house walks in the neighborhood. But we can't always go out all morning long.

The rest of our house is not really set up for playing. Alex's room is on the third floor, at the top of an extremely steep and dangerous flight of steps. It doesn't have much floor space, and we don't keep any of her toys up there - it's just for sleeping. The second floor has our bedroom and study, which are cluttered with furniture, cords and cables, and a million things she's not supposed to mess with. Our indoor play space is pretty much the living-dining room, period. (We have a back courtyard for outdoor play space, but I know from bitter experience that sound travels very well from the basement apartment to the courtyard, and presumably vice versa.)

So: should we require Alex to be sedentary whenever she's indoors before lunchtime? Or is our neighbor expecting too much? I'm looking for honest opinions here, and not just back patting, because I fully recognize that my prior experience with this neighbor is coloring my view of the situation. I just keep thinking, "She's got a lot of damn gall, to be complaining to us about noise."

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Our upstairs neighbours have toddlers and middling-sized kids, which we refer to collectively as the elephant children or the mastodons because they are incredibly noisy, especially from when they get up (6am) to noon. We deal with it by mostly sleeping somewhere that's not so much under where they're leaping -- does she have other rooms she could sleep in? It helps that I tend to wake up early anyway, though rysmiel totally doesn't. However, they also have a new baby and it's started to be loud enough to hear when it cries, and that wakes me instantly, every time.

But I haven't said a word to them, because I think it's easier for adults to change what they do than for children, and having children is such a lot of work without starting to worry about that stuff. Also, they'll grow. (They're charging around above my head right this minute -- it's 7.50. But lo, I am awake, though rysmiel is still trying to sleep.)

You could consider carpet. You could tell her you'll try to be quieter before 10, but that 11.30 is too much. You could warn her when you have playgroup.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I think it's unreasonable to let your children leap around at 6am. I recognize that in some cases it might be awfully hard to stop them, but in those cases I think the parent needs to make major efforts to propitiate the neighbors.

I have generally done my best to keep quiet hours until 8:30 or 9. I am willing to extend that somewhat for a shift worker - say, until 10. 11:30 just seems too hard. That's nearly half of Alex's waking hours gone, and even more of her available playing-with-friends time - we can't have a friend over at 11:30, she goes down for her nap at 1.

New baby cries are a big problem. It would wake me just as it wakes you. All the parents can really do is try to respond quickly, but even then, sometimes you can't turn the crying off.