![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaSeveral 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."
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."
no subject
Date: 2007-02-22 02:36 pm (UTC)I wanted to hear it for myself. A test.
Good God. It was horrid- the pounding thump!thump!thump! The deafening vibrations, from ceiling and walls. The poor woman had a real problem on her hands and I hadn't realized that the old house acoustics had made her downstairs apartment terribly uncomfortable to live in, whether she was sleeping or entertaining.
Oops. We bought thick rugs, and everyone's shoes came off in the house. No Running In the House is actually a reasonable safety rule, and my children understood that. They still played actively and things got better with the neighbor when my kids were more reasonably noisy. Of course, your home may be nothing like mine was, soundwise, and your neighbor may be unreasonable. One other thought: switch your bedroom or study area with baby's sleep space way up top? That would expand babyproof play space on floor two and that staircase sounds like it might be a toddler accident ready to happen. -G.S.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-22 05:33 pm (UTC)Our living room area has a thick rug, but the dining area has hardwood floors. I've started shopping for a heavy rug to put down in the main "runway."
switch your bedroom or study area with baby's sleep space way up top? That would expand babyproof play space on floor two and that staircase sounds like it might be a toddler accident ready to happen.
Our bed would never fit up the twisty steps to the attic. And the study isn't really a "room" - there's a big open well (with just a railing) around the stairs to the first floor, and you have to walk through it to reach the bedroom, bathroom, third floor, etc. It's like a room-sized hallway.
There is a guest room on the third floor that could be used for playing sometimes, although right now it has a big furniture-painting project spread all across the floor. But the radiators in that room don't work, so we have to run an electric space heater in the winter - not so safe for a running toddler!
I agree that the steps are scary. Right now she is mostly carried up, always carried down, and never unsupervised near the steps. By the time she's out of the crib and into a toddler bed, I'm hoping that we'll live somewhere else.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-22 08:04 pm (UTC)It is noisier downstairs from someone. All the years we were in downstairs apartments, it sounded like the people above us got around by flinging themselves to the floor, getting up, and doing it again until they got where they were going.