But…but…doesn’t the little monsters being outdoors mean that they can use their outdoor voices?
My kids, ages 4 and 6 are kinda screamers. When we are indoors, in a place where others are trying to think, or sleep, or learn or just get the damn grocery shopping done, I keep them quiet, and remove them immediately if necessary. But in our backyard, on a Saturday afternoon? If that isn’t the right time for them to let loose a bit, I’m not sure when is. Tell ya what if you never mow your lawn, I’ll never let my kids scream in my backyard.
I just don’t get the whole thing here. Keep them quiet indoors, keep them quiet outdoors, keep them quiet at the playground, in the backyard, in the school yard, in fact anywhere within 1000 feet of a potentially child-free person. Whatever, kids are learning self-control, kids are people, and some kids yes are fucking noisy and obnoxious beasts. Deal with it.
Make sure he gets about half a glass (3 or 4 ounces, I guess) of water and goes to the bathroom during the routine. This eliminates the thirsty and need to pee excuse. Serve an evening meal that has both protein and complex carbs in it, to eliminate the hunger. If he doesn’t eat it, or picks at it, DON’T give a snack. He really won’t starve to death in one night, although he will think that you are trying to kill him (and it’s very hard to hold firm on this, I know). Then, while you can’t force him to sleep, you CAN force him to stay in bed until morning, with the lights out and no company. Company, whether it’s the parents or a sib, can be very exciting. Pets might also be too stimulating. You might also consider giving him a comfort object, like a stuffed toy to sleep with.
Each time he gets up in the night and wakes you up, unless he actually has to pee, he loses a bedtime story or something else the next day. My daughter used to get up when she was about two and ride on her spring horse for a few minutes. I’d wake up, listen to her bounce on it, and then listen while she got back into bed and went back to sleep. The thing is, she could get back to sleep on her own, without having Mama and Daddy waiting on her hand and foot. I didn’t mind it when she woke me up because she had a wet diaper, that was reasonable. A kid needs to be able to go to sleep and stay asleep after infancy, though. It’s just another life skill to learn.
There’s normal outdoors noise, and then there’s a certain high pitched shrilling shriek that is aggravating to parents and nonparents alike. It sounds like the kid is being attacked by wolves. I expect normal yelling and noise from kids when they’re outdoors. However, whining and shrieking are not acceptable, and the kids CAN learn not to do it. Mostly it requires the parent to supervise the child, and not have the child resort to such tactics to get attention.
Once he’s actually asleep, it’s game over - he’s out until morning (unless there is something really wrong). Thank goodness. Actually waking us up in the middle of the night would be very difficult.
The issue is getting him that way.
Yeah, we do this mostly already. He gets his pre-bed drink and pee, and we do not cater to his excuses - though he does keep trying. Routine seems to be key - he accepts that he gets three stories, no more (though he gets to choose). Fortunately, he was used to sleeping on his own his whole life - many kids insist on sleeping with parents, apparently, but I would find this very difficult.
My 9 year old has a certain pitch when she fools around with her voice that makes my 55% deaf right ear feel like a bubble is being pushed inside my ear canal. It is extremely disconcerting.
I’m pretty sure she is a weapon of mass destruction.
I usually give the nod for her older ( and 40 pounds heavier) brother to beat on her like a chinese gong. and like a cat, she ends up chasing off the big, mean dog because she does not fight fair…these are not your children.
My 3 year old kid made up a game that involves shrieking with laughter as part of the strategy. This is the Snake Game. The rules are as follows:
I am the Snake. I have to hold his 6’ stuffed snake toy, and pretent to bite him.
The kid is the Snake Hunter. He has a “shooter” made of lego bricks which (he says) shoots “fire” or “oil”.
The Snake has its lair on the couch. It can hide behind the cusions to avoid being killed by the “shooter”. When that happens, the snake is “in its hole”.
The kid’s “house” is on the small carpet. When he’s in his “house” he can “close the door”, and the Snake can’t bite him - it has to crawl away.
The game is played by the kid furiously “shooting” at the Snake. This involves vigourously thrusting the “shooter” in the direction of the Snake and making loud “Wham! Bang!” noises.
When the kid is shooting at the Snake, and the Snake is not in its hole, the Snake must die. This means it flails about going “aaagg!”.
Two things can happen when the Snake is dying: either the kid’s “shooter” falls apart because he’s waving it about, or the kid starts shreiking with laughter too hard to shoot.
In either case, that gives the Snake a chance to bite the kid.
The kid then has to retreat into his “house” to fix his shooter or to stop laughing. If he doesn’t close the door in time, the Snake follows him into his house and bites him until I get tired of it.
The Snake then retreats into its hole and the game starts again.
The “skill” on the Snake’s part is mostly in acting out the dying in an exaggerated enough manner to get the kid laughing; the skill on the kid’s part is in retreating & closing the door in time to avoid being thoroughly bitten.
Well, sure. And yeah, a lot of people who whine and bitch about children screaming don’t say a damned thing about the cars that drive by their house making just as much noise. If you don’t want to hear the sounds of children at all, move into the woods and become a hermit.
But, hey, there’s a reasonable limit to everything. The OP cites the child as shrieking nonstop for HOURS. That’s not reasonable. To use an analogous sound, I don’t mind my neighbour using a lawn mower - and any decent lawn mower is louder than any human being can be without a megaphone - but if he ran it for hours at a time on a regular basis I might ask him just how short his grass really needs to be.
Yeah, I love this quote. Read it about 20 years ago, and still talk about it. As I remember it, the character’s argument was something like this:
Human infants are the most hated creatures on the planet, for three reasons.
They’re the perfect snack. No feathers, no fur, no teeth, soft bones, mostly fat, milk-fed; they can’t fun away, they can’t fight back; they’re delicious and easy to catch!
They’ve evolved to make an incredibly annoying noise. It makes their parents try to help them, but for other creatures, it just gives you a bonus to eating them: you get a delicious snack, PLUS you shut that damned noise up.
But if you ever eat one–if you even THINK about eating one–you’re doomed. Human parents are the nastiest mofos on the planet. They won’t just stop at killing you, no, they’ll hunt down and kill your entire family, and you better watch out in case they decide to go on a campaign of genocide against your entire species.
So other animals just sit at the sidelines, loathing human infants.