I ask because I have a situation. I have never met the neighbors who live in the next apartment to mine, but I could tell you an awful lot about them, including the name of their child and their preferences for television (they enjoy The Daily Show.)
I really don’t care during the day, but for the last couple of months their banshee-like child has been screaming at the top of his lungs, like clockwork, and waking me up. I usually go to bed at 10 or 11, and around midnight I can be pretty much guaranteed that kid is going to start in with his nightly ‘‘I don’t want to go to bed’’ tantrum. He repeats the tantrum for his morning bath, as well. Every. Single. Day. If I had to guess, I’d put him at 2-4 years old. He is capable of basic words and phrases but they are incomprehensible through his shrieking.
The parents seem to be dealing with it the best they can, but I’m not a parent so it’s hard to judge. They tell him to stop crying and they’ve disciplined him for hitting his sibling by making him stand in the corner. But sometimes they probably make the screaming worse by responding to it so consistently. The parents’ admonishments are equally as loud as the child, and they also always make a general ruckus when doing anything around the house–maybe we just have really thin walls.
Whenever the kid finally shuts up, they start talking to him again and he starts right back up again. And other times, it’s hard to tell whether the kid is screaming or laughing. Far be it for me to complain about the laughter of children, but does he really have to be so gosh darned loud? At midnight and 6am?
I haven’t said anything to them, mostly because I’m not very confrontational (again, I’ve never so much as seen these folks in the hallway.) Also, English is not their first language. They can presumably speak it and understand it because they often use it with their children, but there’s always room for awkward misunderstandings. Also I am a wimp.
I just wondered if this was worth trying to do something about. I definitely miss out on sleep because of the kid, but then again, I miss out on sleep because of my cat as well. Is it likely that the parents could even do something about this? They seem to be doing all they can. I almost feel like talking to them about it would be adding insult to injury.
Sorry for you, yes it definitely sucks all the way around, and I doubt there’s anything you can do. It sounds (nyuck nyuck) like they’re just accustomed to being loud, if you can hear their television. The rest is basically normal child behavior.
BK (Before Kids) I was convinced my neighbors were abusing their children because they were so loud. Now I know better. There are quiet families in the world, but ours isn’t one of them.
It probably isn’t any comfort, but kids DO outgrow these phases, after a few months. Usually. Sometimes.
He’ll find something else to have a fit about, though.
A lot of children are completely intractable at about age 2.5, 3.5 and 4.5. There’s even a name for it, it’s called “periods of disequilibrium” (Louise Bates Ames of the Giselle Institute over at Yale thought that one up). For the primary caretaker, it’s not a lot of fun.
The parents can help, sometimes, by modeling quiet behavior, that’s really all they can do (duct tape being inappropriate).
But as you say, your neighbors are loud themselves.
If they are running a household where the kid’s regular bedtime is midnight, I don’t think they have the kind of family where they’re likely to control the kid’s noise. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but that’s not a typical bedtime for preschoolers in the US.
Some kids are tantrumy. It’s either because the parents don’t make the proper efforts to reel it in or because the kid is just built that way (or both). I agree with the other posters who say they grow out of it in most cases. The normal tantrumy kid can be taught that this is unacceptable behavior, but the parents really have to work hard at not bending to it (which can be really difficult after a long day).
The whole midnight thing…that just doesn’t make sense to me unless the parents have a really weird schedule. It will be very hard to break a bad sleep habit when the kid finally has to work within “normal” schedules. I feel sorry for you AND them. Not a situation I’d want to be part of.
I was thinking that the midnight ruckus is due to the kid waking up (perhaps when baby sibling is being fed?) and not the kid’s bedtime. Little kids typically sleep for 10-12 hrs/day.
It’s so funny how one’s perspective changes - you describe the tyke as being"2-4 yrs old". For me, with twins turning five soon, there’s a vast gulf between a 2-yr-old and a 4-yr-old. Just amusing.
And I know that getting a kid back in bed at midnight is not fun. We’ve often remarked how grateful we are that we were finally able to buy a house.
Shouldn’t the question be, “How much can landlords control the volume of their tenants?” Regular screaming in the middle of the night, whether adult or child, seems worth a call to building management.
It sounds like the parents are doing the best they can, but they don’t have the tools to know how to manage this child’s behavior. They should look into a behaviorist or a professional nanny. As for what you can do about it…well, not much.
As has been pointed out, “Two to four years old” is a meaningless age range when discussing a child’s behaviour. It’s like saying someone is “either male or female” or “his income is somewhere between ten thousand and ten million dollars a year.” A two year old anda four year old are dramatically different.
I’d be a little weirded out that they’re putting their kid to bed at midnight. Unless they keep bizarre hours because of their work scheduled, that’s amazingly late for a kid to be up. It may be that the child is having some late night wakup issues. If that’s true, it’s a phase, and they have to get through it, and believe me, complaining will not help.
Being able to hear their TV, however, is not cool. That, I’d complain about.
Put a fan in your room and turn it on high, you can face it away from you if it’s too cold. My husband works shift work, and a fan has always help block noise, even coming from the adjacent bedrooms.
I appreciate the input. I am clueless about children and wouldn’t know much about the difference between a two and a four year old. I initially thought the kid was an infant until I heard him saying words the other day. I think there is more than one child.
And maybe it is closer to eleven than midnight… I usually go to bed around ten, and invariably get woken up 1-2 hours later. It seems like they do put the kid to bed while I’m falling asleep, so he may have these late wake-up issues.
There is a possibility that they don’t realize how well they can be heard through your walls or that people are very aware of their 12:00am discipline sessions. Maybe if they knew, they would make an effort to deal with their kid more quietly.
When I was in an apartment, I sometimes did not realize how noisy my little one could be (as a parent, you get used to it).
Just amusing.