Neighbours children driving me mad!

[drummerdimitri]

My upstair neighbours have two kids who do nothing but run around,jump and drop their toys on the floor creating lots of noise and it's driving me crazy!

I wake up at 6:20 AM on weekends when I usually sleep till 10 after a long night because they decide it's fair to let them make a racket at that ungodly hour.

Sleep disturbance is terrible since I have to wake up and go back to sleep every damn night many times until I wake up at my usual times.

What can I do? Should I talk to them about it or can they do nothing about it? They are children after all...

I'd love to soundproof my room but I don't think vibrations from jumping/running will be blocked unlike sound.

I am living a nightmare and would like some opinions on what can be done about it.

[Precisiontools]

Earplugs...special soft ones for sleeping.

[drummerdimitri]

Earplugs...special soft ones for sleeping.

Tried them but they don't work...

[imidis]

I'd try talking to them. Sometimes it works.

[Zero999]

You could try headphones playing pink noise which will hopefully mask the sound quite well.

[drummerdimitri]

You could try headphones playing pink noise which will hopefully mask the sound quite well.

Headphones are out of the question. Maybe a small speaker or fan on my bedside table to mask the noise?

[bd139]

As a parent I’d lose my shit at my kids if they did this. No respect for neighbours is not how you run things.

Stick some AC/DC on full whack at about 2:30AM to wake them up for about ten minutes. They’ll sleep in longer then.

Incidentally you tend not to be able to talk to people with children as they think you’re criticising their parenting and go on the defence. Not much you can do. Criticising parenting should be an acceptable thing in my mind.

[abraxa]

What you can do depends on the country you're in, too.

[Halcyon]

Whenever there is a dispute between neighbours, the first thing I ask is "have you tried talking to them?". The answer is almost always "no". I'd start there, approach the issue directly with the parents. They aren't mind readers. Remember to approach it calmly and respectfully. Chances are, they have no idea this is disturbing you. They might not be aware that there isn't a huge slab of concrete separating them and you. Having a go at someone will probably end up making the problem worse.

Secondly, it sounds like you live in an apartment or similar high-density housing. I've been there and done that myself... never again! Unfortunately, that's part of the deal when you're literally living on top of each other, however part of that deal works both ways in my opinion, if you live in an apartment, you need to take extra care not to disturb those around you, whether that be turning the TV down or being mindful of how loud your conversations are.

If the noise is that bad and unreasonable, you could lodge a "noise complaint" with your local Police and they can go over and have a chat to the offending family. However these are usually very low on the priority list and seldom work if the people involved are selfish, inconsiderate morons.

I guess the extreme measure would be to move, or if you own your unit, perhaps consider selling up? At least your problem is "only" children, I remember before I bought my current place, I dealt with dickheads riding Harley's and shitbox Subaru's with massive exhausts at all times of the day and night, children grow up, adults with "size compensation issues" generally don't.

[jonovid]

dense people in high-density housing is your problem,  architects of so called smart cities should live in them.

[BrianHG]

You want silence, this will do it!

It's a little disgusting, and you need to be careful (WARNING), but this will be the only way to get rid of the sound.

Get the orange ear plugs I have attached in the image (only the type in the green circle), and only the orange ones of this size.  Roll each one between your fingers as if you were normally going to insert it in your ear.

Note that the next step will only work if they really retain their rigidity after rolling them, some older ones are too soft and expand too quickly.  Some brands don't have the rigidity and you wont be able to the next 2 steps right.

Next, add saliva, yes, lick them wet, and insert the lubricated earplug into your ear canal so that the outside is just about flush with your ear hole,  channeling/guiding the wet/lubricated sharpened rolled point down your ear canal.  You need to leave some material to grab to pull them out.  They will dry out within a minute.

The ear plug will make a soft bubbling his as it expands and tightens into your ear canal as all sound down to below 25hz will completely vanish.

WARNING, like this, you CANNOT just pull them out, they will POP you eardrum.  SERIOUSLY, they were never intended to be inserted into your ear like this and you must pull them out EXTREMELY SLOW, to allow air to equalize through the foam.  If you damage your ears, I will not be held responsible, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED IN UPPERCASE.

Using these earplugs like this, you will be essentially near death.  Do not expect an alarm clock or a phone ringing OR A SMOKE DETECTOR FIRE ALARM to be audible or wake you up from sleep.  I will not be held responsible if you sleep through a fire alarm wearing ear plugs like this.

You want silence, this will do it and it does work!  I also recommend cleaning out your ears with Q-tips before doing this...

WARNING, it works so well that it may become addictive just to get sleep if you live in a noisy situation, so use this method sparingly...  (Ahhh, the peace and tranquility of near complete silence...)  (Arrrrg, the annoyance of having to pull them out because of an itch in your ear you want to scratch...)

Warning, use the wrong type of ear plugs like the way I have mentioned, and you may get them permanently stuck in your ear without that additional ring/rim like the 2 examples in my attached photos.  You may need to find different pharmacies/grocery stores who contain different types before you find someone who stocks the right ones.

[SeanB]

Welcome to the club, though thankfully as the twins upstairs have gotten older they do not rollerskate around the rooms, when not running seemingly in clogs.  thankfully they are 2 floors above, though the upstairs gets i full brunt, i just get the echo that goes through. However I can always tell when the male cat Tequila wakes up at 4AM though, as his tread on the floor is audible, unlike the female Keshasha.

solutions if it is your own flat is to put a false acoustic ceiling up in your bedroom, with at least 20cm of acoustic wadding in the space to damp it down, or to move. as from your username I assume you like in a Hellenic country, there is little else other than moving to a place where you are on the top floor.

[mcinque]

As a parent I’d lose my shit at my kids if they did this. No respect for neighbours is not how you run things.

[woody]

Best advise: talk to them. Not yell, but talk. Explain the situation, let them listen for themselves if need be and make an agreement on when they can make noise and when they should go easy. As you said, their children are children but that does not mean they can wake you up at any hour. It is also a good idea to agree on a way to let them know in the future when the racket is too great to bear. This gives you a valuable bit of control of the situation.

You do not elaborate about the parents so I have no idea what kind of people they are but more often than not homo sapiens living close together have a mutual interest in keeping relations good and their houses 'homes'. The one important condition here is communication. Without it your neighbors might not realize the level of nuisance they inflict on your floor. And who knows you, being DrummerDimitri, can also be heard upstairs?

Oh, and getting up at 3 am to play Unfinished Sympathy at 10 is generally not a good idea to get the communication going. More like a last straw

[VK3DRB]

...Stick some AC/DC on full whack at about 2:30AM to wake them up for about ten minutes. They’ll sleep in longer then.

Try playing the Justin Bieber Christmas Album. They found it works well in Guantanamo Bay to extract false confessions.

Seriously you have good reason to approach the parents. You should not have to endure ignorant, rude and selfish people. Kids know no better, but their parents should.

I am very sensitive to such things. Recently I had a bloke spit a huge grot into a bin at a shopping mall a few inches from my face as I was doing up my shoelace. I told him off. I almost asked him "Didn't Chairman Mao teach you any manners?" but I contained my anger. Even so the peasant got the message that such behaviour is not tolerated here.

On Friday night I went to see The Post at the cinema. Some people behind me were slowing rusting EMPTY crinkly bags  for no reason at all but to annoy the heck out of others for 15 minutes... until I made it clear to them they are to cease and desist. But the old bastard next to me took over by grunting at the end of every cliche sentence in the movie. If a comment was humorous, we would emit two grunts. I noticed the woman next to him was also grunting, but less so often. I did some research into this affliction of grunting when some actor makes a comment in a movie and came to the conclusion they could not help themselves as they were suffering from moronitis, a strain of the disease called imbecilism. It can be fatal if goes on too long .

Years ago I went to see Eiger Sanction staring Clint Eastwood, with a mate. Behind us were two Italian ladies chatting thoughout the movie.. in Italian   . We got up and moved to the only two other spare seats in the cinema. Only to have on old bloke behind us sucking his false teeth loudly  .  Sometimes ya can't win.

[taydin]

I had that issue way back, when my neighbor upstairs got into a habit of listening to rap music at 7:00am. I endured for a few days, but then I just took a broom and started hitting the ceiling like a machine gun. Luckily he was a reasonable man, he stopped the music and didn't do it again.

So, I agree that it is possible that your neighbors are reasonable people and that they just don't know that their kids are giving you hell. Just let them know.

[Ice-Tea]

Talk to them.

But know this: no parent chooses to have their kids awake at 6:20AM...

[cdev]

I've been in this situation. It's very difficult but there are things you can do. You should talk to the parents and try to figure out some mitigating steps that can be done before you descend into the hell of inter neighbor battles.

I am guessing that this has been going on for a long time. Do they have carpeting in their apartment because carpeting on the floors will reduce the sound level significantly?

Another thing which will help even more is rubber padding underneath the carpeting. I have had two friends, (both were professional DJs and one was also a sound engineer) who completely covered their floors with thick dense rubber padding precisely cut to fit perfectly over the entire floor and then nice dense pile carpets over that, it was very effective in reducing noise in a high noise urban living situation. You could suggest that to them. You can also cover the walls with sound absorbent materials. Ceiling would be the most problematic but they do make thick sound deadening materials which lend themselves to that, but take care that whatever you use meets fire codes and also is not toxic. So called "egg foam" will soak up sound but is flammable, and also attracts dust and is hard to clean, so is not such a good idea. You could try pieces of plywood cut to shape with carpet remnants stapled to both sides of it suspended from ceiling by very short bungee cords or something. (flexible and hanging=will not transmit the thumps).  Make sure its both secure and flexible. Strong bungees would probably be best. Cotton rope would probably work better than a chain in terms of sound deadening..

Keep in mind that there is a certain age where they run around a super lot and it doesn't last that long, so its probable that when they get just a bit older they wont be so noisy. (unless your neighbors have more children)

Look at the bright side, at least your neighbors aren't a deaf couple having sex five or six times a day, or a convalescent hospital where people were crying out in pain at all hours.  (I've had to live with both of these)

My upstair neighbours have two kids who do nothing but run around,jump and drop their toys on the floor creating lots of noise and it's driving me crazy!

I wake up at 6:20 AM on weekends when I usually sleep till 10 after a long night because they decide it's fair to let them make a racket at that ungodly hour.

Sleep disturbance is terrible since I have to wake up and go back to sleep every damn night many times until I wake up at my usual times.

What can I do? Should I talk to them about it or can they do nothing about it? They are children after all...

I'd love to soundproof my room but I don't think vibrations from jumping/running will be blocked unlike sound.

I am living a nightmare and would like some opinions on what can be done about it.

[joseph nicholas]

If your neighbors are clearly over there heads with parenting problems you probabily need to have a direct confrontation with them.  They will react with supprise and then anger.  They may start yelling and get defensive.  At that point back down and don't talk to them again.  This may be effective if one parent tells the other we can't live above the jerk below.  They might move.  Problem is: the next tenant will know about you and the cycle will repeat.  Eventually you'll figure a time when everyone is sleeping in the place above you and adjust your hours accordingly.  Hope this helps.

[BradC]

But know this: no parent chooses to have their kids awake at 6:20AM...

And then some. Look at it this way. As a parent it often becomes a case of picking your battles. Sometimes you just let the kids run riot as at that moment they're burning off energy and not hurting anyone. I'll lay odds those parents have *no* idea it is affecting you. Once you've politely made them aware of it, if they are half reasonable people your issue will become one of the battles they choose to work on and the problem should resolve itself.

Try to work with them, because being a parent really can feel like negotiating with a foreign terrorist and outside antagonism will be the last thing they need.

Of course if they are arses about it, then game on, but try honey first.

[MT]

All you do when kids start to make noise is noise back by playing M.A Numminen while you loudly shouts,
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen:

[Zero999]

...Stick some AC/DC on full whack at about 2:30AM to wake them up for about ten minutes. They’ll sleep in longer then.

Try playing the Justin Bieber Christmas Album. They found it works well in Guantanamo Bay to extract false confessions.

How about the poor bugger living below/beside you? It's hardly fair to piss them off too.

[Cyberdragon]

...Stick some AC/DC on full whack at about 2:30AM to wake them up for about ten minutes. They’ll sleep in longer then.

Try playing the Justin Bieber Christmas Album. They found it works well in Guantanamo Bay to extract false confessions.

How about the poor bugger living below/beside you? It's hardly fair to piss them off too.

If you attach the speaker to the ceiling with the cone facing up, it should direct most of the sound up.

[cdev]

Don't antagonize them. Stick to talking/being reasonable. You'll get much farther.

[fonograph]

I strongly suggest talking to them.

If you can,move into different location,if not,I would use some form of accoustic absorbtion.The frequencies I expect are low since the walls act like low pass filter,its probably stuff 200 Hz or lower.

I would try tuned absorber,helmholtz resonators to kill the most irritating frequencies,or you can use porous absorber,it must have correct airflow resistivity  to thickness ratio otherwise its going to be ineffective.I would cover entire upper side of your room with 40cm thick porous absorber with 3000 to 6000 Pa.s/m2 flow resistivity.

You can also put it on wall,your bedroom will loose massive amount of internal space but you have to ask yourself,how much do you really want to have undisturbed sleep.