On the one hand, kids in the US are getting fatter, partly because they are sitting indoors instead of going outside and playing. On the other, if they scream too loud, the neighbors sue.
They’re kids. They make noise. That’s what they do.
Then they grow up and leave the house for the summer, like my son did Thursday.
And it’s so quiet around here, I could scream.
Regards,
Shodan
I think it’d be considered normal density in about 1/2 of US states - there are 8,000 people here and that’s a town, not a village. In any case, 1000 feet isn’t so much, I can see many of the neighbors houses easily, after all. I’d see them all if it weren’t for the trees. I assume you live in a city, but aren’t there any more rural areas over there? Our house in the city was on .5 acres, max.
There’s noise, and then there’s NOISE. There’s a continuum of different noise levels, some of which are reasonable, some of which are simply girls shrieking at the top of their lungs every night while you’re trying to enjoy your home.
While kids can be expected to make noise, parents should be expected to teach their kids a wee bit of respect for the people around them. They don’t live in the country with nothing but trees to listen to them, they’re 30 feet from someone elses home, someone else who maybe also has the right to enjoy their evening home.
Shrieking and screaming are simply unacceptable. We live in the middle of nowhere with no neighbors anywhere to disturb, but my kids understand that if I hear prolonged shrieking/screaming there’d better be blood. I don’t want my ears desensitized to alarming types and levels of childhood noise, and I’m way too busy to sprint out to the playset every time an undisciplined kid feels like screaming.
I spent a good deal of yesterday taking 3 small girls outside to play–3, 4, and 6. Favorite cousins, they are. They ran around a lot, but they managed to do it without screaming all the time.
You don’t have to go far from you to find this type of zoning. Look at the residential free-standing single family home communities in Concord, Manchester, Goffstown, Nashua or Salem (Depending on where you are in NH).
Go to the same spots in the large towns (nearer to town) or cities (Lawrence, Lowell, Dracut, Newburyport, Haverhill), and you’ll see just this sort of zoning.
Depending on the location in the country, many planned communities are being built on lots this size as well. The houses are stacked in, and there are common facilities for the community as well.
In Sandown, I’m happy with my 1.34 acre lot, though I’d be happier with a good 50 or so.
I’ve lived on 1/3 acre lots but outside of the incredibly packed in areas right on the east coast it really isn’t that typical in most of the country outside of outright metropolitan/highly urbanized areas.
I think an American of 1900 might consider it a sad commentary on American life that 1/3 acre lots are considered large. Many Americans used to grow up with many acres of property.
I grew up on a 1.5 acre lot and while our house was reasonably sized (four bedrooms, but with five kids, the two parents, and a live-in grandparent for much of that time it was anything but spacious) and if you had added another house the same size on that particular plot, neither house would have much of a “yard” just a small border of grass around the structure itself.
So, none of the neighbors own paintball guns?
That’s the way we were brought up, too. I have no kids, and my neighborhood is full of them. The only time their noise bothers me is if they are shrieking, or if someone is crying really loud (because I’m afraid their hurt.)
Or sniper rifles.
Who needs a paintball gun or a rifle? Just huck a yellowjacket nest over the fence. A brief increase in shrieking followed by blissful silence.
(I have screaming neighbor kids behind me. Had to put egg-crate foam in my windows.)
About ten years ago, some kids (mostly little girls) in my parents’ neighbourhood went through a screaming phase. It was not playful squeals of delight or anything, it was bona fide screaming as if you were fighting for your life, Jamie-Lee-Curtis-vs.-Michael-Myers screaming that a B horror movie queen would be hard-pressed to compete with.
No one really knows what the game was, although it did seem that the girls were trying to out-do one another and use it as a banshee weapon to chase the boys. It drove everyone crazy. They’d keep going until they physically couldn’t do it anymore. Sure it was “kids being kids”, but Jeebus it was like fingernails on a blackboard. Plus, it had a “cry wolf” effect.
It took only to days of this before a bunch of parents in the neighbourhood consulted each other and put and end to it. It was easy for parents to determine if their kids were amongst the screaming banshees due to the hoarseness.
I don’t think this is a case of deliberate screaming as a game.
I probably don’t react the same as many others might. To me, kids playing (loudly) is one of the background noises of summer. If you have a different visceral reaction, noise levels that would curl your hair I would barely notice. My next door neighbor has a pool, and last night his daughter had a pool party. I was out on my deck having a cigar. They didn’t complain about my cigar; I didn’t complain about their pool party.
I also had a run-in with a neighbor at our last house, many years ago. It was about 2:00pm on a Sunday afternoon, and Shodan Jr. was having loud fun with his buddy on the swing set (he was about five at the time). The son of the next-door neighbor yelled at them to be quiet. It turned out he had a hangover and the noise bothered him.
So possibly I am identifying more with the kids’ parents than the complaining neighbors because of that.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m generally the one on your side of the argument Shodan. I homeschool because I think the average American kid’s day is over-structured, over-sedentary and over-quiet. I’m also the one always hawking this book to other parents because I mourn the diminishment of true childhood curiosity and wonder in our society. But it’s a mistake to think that a few hours of uninhibited screaming on summer afternoons will make up for all the environmental ills that plague the health and welfare of our kids. On the contrary, it probably only serves to satisfy the parents’ nagging conscience while offering a completely unsatisfying outdoor experience for the kids.
I’d stick with the neighbors on this one: When kids are screaming like that, there is something very seriously wrong.
Oh, I just realized my post wasn’t clear. What I was implying is that responsible parents do intervene when noise levels get out of control.
No one had to call the cops, and I don’t think anyone even needed to complain to the parents, when the neighbour’s kids were sonically out of control. The parents basically got in touch with each other “Hey, our kids seem to have lost their minds… Shall we put up a united front to get them to knock it off?”
Aside from the game, the kids do occasionally get excessively noisey. Squirt-gun wars and waterfights are usually good wasy to get kids riled up and shrieking. If the kids got too rowdy or the noise levels went on excessively long, you’d hear one of the moms come out to ask them to tone it down a little. Alternatively, the mom would bring out popsicles to break the momentum of whatever shenangians they were up to: squealing, shrieking water fight broken up with yummy treats and then they all go bike riding.
My parents’ one neighbour is quite a gem. The kids get to play with gusto, but she knows when to draw the line.
Again, my own experience probably affects my reaction. I never had any trouble distinguishing the “having too much fun” scream from the “Mr. Chainsaw doesn’t like Billy” scream. And neither of my kids were unusually loud, so I probably assume that the kids in this story were operating at roughly the same decibel levels. Like I said, I heard the video linked above, and basically shrugged. YMMV.
And Swallowed My Cellphone, I do wonder what kinds of interactions the neighbors in this case had with the Little Angels of Song before all this went south. In my anecdote of the Hungover Neighbor, we had always gotten along famously with the elderly folks whose son it was, even to the point where my kids were welcome to come and play in their yard, especially when their grandkids were over to visit. And a good, albeit loud, time was had by all.
One wonders if the neighbors had tried anything else before taking a confrontational tone and filing suit.
Regards,
Shodan
Hey, my kindred spirit! I’ve been hawking that book all over (not to mention the homeschooling-too part).
But a happy involvement with nature isn’t the same thing as screaming. I would put a difference between ‘outdoor play, which can get loud’ and ‘constant shrieking.’ The latter isn’t necessary and bothers other people. I tell my kids that I don’t want to hear screaming unless blood is involved. They still manage to enjoy playing outside.
Or an amplifier for that audio recording. I can see playing that back into the neighbors yard (at comprable levels) duing the other hours. I would think/hope the neighbors would get the picture if they had to hear the screams when it wasn’t ‘their’ kids…so to speak.
Out of curiosity, what did you do?
Did you tell the neighbor to bugger off, or did you quiet down your kid and his friend?
Actually, for me, I’d probably choose to develop an interest in filthy, profanity laden rap music.
“Sorry, I’m just playing my ‘favorite’ music to cover up the noise your kids are making. If they were quieter, I’d probably not feel the need to play it at all.”