“You Choose to Feel That Way”

1. On December 1st, 2009 at 9:08 am Dori Says:

   You said ” I also try to refrain from say­ing things that either place blame, “You are mak­ing me frustrated/mad”

   Don’t you think chil­dren need to learn that their actions have an effect on other people’s feel­ings?? Say­ing things like “Hit­ting hurts me” or “When you yell at me it hurts mommy’s feel­ings” Is a great learn­ing opportunity.

   kind of like the whole noise sit­u­a­tion you’re hav­ing in your apart­ment. You CAN’T just let it go and for­get about it because you have been taught to respect, val­i­date and see when your actions are impact­ing another person.

   I hope this doesn’t sound harsh, I don’t mean it that way.

   I’m sorry about your sit­u­a­tion and most lik­ley the neigh­bour is over­re­act­ing and gos­sip­ing about you to the other neigh­bours that’s why the lady ignored you. My advice would be to apoli­gize, ‘try’ to keep quiet but don’t flip your life upside down try­ing to appease her. That’s all you can do.

   Do you guys have a law like we do that you can be noisy between 7am and 10pm? Because if you do then you can tell her to shove it. You can’t be friends with everyone.

2. On December 1st, 2009 at 9:22 am Peter Says:

   > I’m con­stantly think­ing about how loud it might be downstairs

   Good! That’s called being a con­sid­er­ate neigh­bor. It’s great that the noise from your kids in your house doesn’t bother you. But when you chose to move into an apart­ment you chose to live in an envi­ron­ment where one needs to be aware of their neigh­bors. The unwrit­ten rule isn’t that the apart­ment is kid unfriendly. The unwrit­ten rule is that when your home and your neighbor’s home share a wall then it is expected both par­ties will be con­sid­er­ate about the noise they make.

   Maybe you didn’t real­ize that noise trav­els between walls. Maybe you didn’t real­ize you’re kids are noisy (aka nor­mal healthy kids). Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to move into an apart­ment. It’s not your fault and mis­takes hap­pen. Now try to think of it from your neighbor’s perspective.

   Your neigh­bors aren’t being mean; they are stressed out. From their per­spec­tive, they feel they shouldn’t have to tell you that you’re mak­ing too much noise. They feel you are being incon­sid­er­ate by mak­ing the noise in the first place! You have essen­tially forced your noisy kids into their nice quiet apart­ment. Their home that they have put much money into and much time and energy mak­ing it the home they love… you’ve forced your­self into that. That’s upsetting.

   When I was a kid I lived above another apart­ment and if I started jump­ing or bang­ing on the floor my mother scolded me to “stop jump­ing on our neighbor’s heads”. That was the right thing to do, the con­sid­er­ate thing, the good neigh­bor thing. It is good to teach your kids to be con­sid­er­ate of others.

   If you want to try to fix things with your neigh­bors then you need to tell them a] you are aware your kids noise lev­els has been both­er­ing the neigh­bors, b] your kids aren’t used to liv­ing in an apart­ment and hav­ing to think about noise lev­els, and c] you will teach your kids to know bet­ter. In other words, let your neigh­bors know that you know you’ve been a prob­lem and you are intent on becom­ing a solution.

   At the end of the day you will either be known as the incon­sid­er­ate neigh­bor with the undis­ci­plined kids or the con­sid­er­ate neigh­bor with the well behaved kids. That IS your choice.

3. On December 1st, 2009 at 10:22 am Susan Says:

   The only use­ful things I can sug­gest is that if you have hard floors it could be worth putting rugs down to help muf­fle the noise. Am I right in think­ing it is the per­son liv­ing directly below you? Noise always trav­els worst to the rooms below so the chances are any noise is worst for them. Per­haps also if you asked if there were any par­tic­u­lar times that the noise was par­tic­u­larly a prob­lem for her (e.g. if she gets up later than you in the morn­ing then maybe that is an issue) so thta you can be par­tic­u­larly care­ful about those times rather than walk­ing on eggshells all the time. Although the pre­vi­ous com­menter has made the point that you should know that you need to be more care­ful about noise when liv­ing in an apart­ment, peo­ple liv­ing in apart­ments also need to appre­ci­ate that there will be noise from neigh­bours and that you can’t expect every­one to be as quiet as you would like all of the time.

4. On December 1st, 2009 at 12:25 pm Courtney Says:

   OK, I am going to total­lly take your side on this one and say that I can only imag­ine how you must be feeling…all the stress and anx­i­ety. You want to be a good neigh­bor, but you also want to be a good mom and let your kids be kids…it def­i­nitely seems like a del­i­cate balance.

   If I was in this sit­u­a­tion (and I know I would be feel­ing EXACTLY like you are feel­ing), I would bake some home­made bread or muffins or a cake or some­thing, take it to the neigh­bor across the hall, the one who ignored you, the one right below you, maybe even take your boys with you, and then just kill them with kind­ness. Maybe say things like, “I know we must be very loud at times…I just want you to know that I am def­i­nitely aware of it and work­ing to keep it down…I know we must be dis­turb­ing you and we are very sorry…”

   Maybe they will be so taken aback by your open­ness that they will then be a lit­tle more tol­er­ant and just plain kind to you and your kids.

   It sounds like a tricky situation.

5. On December 1st, 2009 at 1:04 pm Casey Says:

   Dori– I actu­ally agree with you com­pletely. In fact, the exam­ples you gave such as “hit­ting hurts me” or “yelling is loud and we need to be respect­ful or our neigh­bors” are things I say fre­quently. The dif­fer­ence is the word­ing to me. “You are mak­ing me…” puts blame on him. I feel like say­ing that opens the door to either of them say­ing, “He made me mad, so I had to hit him” or “He hit me, so I had to push him.” I’m not say­ing they shouldn’t know the effects their actions have on oth­ers. I just think that we all need to be respon­si­ble for our own actions and feelings.

   Peter– I think it is inter­est­ing that you imme­di­ately jumped to the con­clu­sion that I am either unfa­mil­iar with liv­ing in apart­ments or uncar­ing of my neigh­bors. We have actu­ally been told that there are sev­eral peo­ple who live her who wish chil­dren would not live here. In the past 12 years, my fam­ily and I have spent 9 of the 12 in one apart­ment or another. I have had many dif­fer­ent neigh­bors, and I have dealt with one com­plaint from a neigh­bor prior to this. We also cur­rently have a child liv­ing above us, and we are aware what the sound is like when he is play­ing or jumping.

   I also think it’s inter­est­ing that you assume that it is my choice to be per­ceived one way or another. In the same apart­ment build­ing, we have had sev­eral peo­ple com­ment on our nice, kind, well behaved chil­dren. Our neigh­bor who lives directly next to our liv­ing room (where we spend most of our time) has said many times she barely hears any­thing from us. We check with her, and she tells us that it is fine for her. It is two peo­ple in par­tic­u­lar who seem to be hav­ing issues. One lives below us, and the other doesn’t live any­where near us. Nei­ther per­son has any exam­ple of a par­tic­u­lar time when our chil­dren were mak­ing excess noise or a lot of noise for a long period of time. The one time our neigh­bor spoke to me, she told me they were too loud at 10:30 p.m. At that point, my kids had been sleep­ing for 1 1/2 hours. My hus­band was home, and I was gone. I can do what is within my power. I can and do talk with my chil­dren about their actions. They know not to touch other people’s doors in the hall­ways. They know that run­ning, jump­ing, and yelling are out­side games/activities. They know that there are peo­ple liv­ing all around us. I have also attempted to talk with our neigh­bor a cou­ple times, how­ever, it seems that unless she wants to approach me, she refuses to talk as she will not answer the door nor will she respond to any notes of inquiry ask­ing how we are doing. I can only do what I can do.

   Susan– We have mostly car­pet. There is linoleum in the kitchen and din­ing area, but we only eat there. We don’t play there or do much else there. Thanks for the thoughts! I’m hop­ing the next 18(?) months go quickly!

   Court­ney– I’m not even look­ing for peo­ple to take sides! I under­stand that there are three ver­sions of the story, our neigh­bors, mine, and real­ity. I know we are not at all the per­fect neigh­bors. I just want to open a line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I would like for her to say, “It’s been nois­ier than usual in the after­noon” or “I have to be up late for xyz rea­son, and I need my sleep in the morn­ing.” In those cases, I would have some sort of ref­er­ence for the prob­lem. At this point, it seems like sim­ply hav­ing chil­dren is the problem.

6. On December 1st, 2009 at 2:14 pm Peter Says:

   I can only respond to the infor­ma­tion you have posted. And from what you first posted it didn’t sound like you are con­sid­er­ate of your neigh­bors. Your reac­tion to any com­plaint seems to be to deny and argue. “We don’t have a tread­mill.” “The kids weren’t even home.” Etc. What sort of mes­sage do you think that con­veys? “Lis­ten crazy neigh­bor lady, stop being so crazy. We are quiet as doormice and you are just being crazy.” Instead, you could try some­thing like “I’m sorry we were dis­turb­ing you. I’ll look into it and try to fix the problem.”

   Now it is entirely pos­si­ble that she IS crazy neigh­bor lady and hates kids and will blame the rain on them if given the chance. In that case there’s noth­ing you can do. Which is I guess the point you were try­ing to make orig­i­nally. “Noth­ing I can do. How do I cope with that?” If there really is noth­ing you can do (and only you can make that deter­mi­na­tion) then in sit­u­a­tions like that I like to remem­ber that there were peo­ple who hated the Bud­dha; there were peo­ple who hated Jesus. If THOSE guys couldn’t please every­one then maybe we shouldn’t be to hard on ourselves.

7. On December 1st, 2009 at 2:32 pm Casey Says:

   Your reac­tion to any com­plaint seems to be to deny and argue. “We don’t have a tread­mill.” “The kids weren’t even home.” Etc. What sort of mes­sage do you think that conveys?

   I real­ize that it seems like a lot of denial. I’m not deny­ing that they play dur­ing the day. I’m not deny­ing that they are louder than she would like. How­ever, in read­ing your first post, I got the impres­sion that there was no way she could be unre­al­is­tic in her expec­ta­tions. I also got the impres­sion that you think I am overly sen­si­tive. I am sen­si­tive. I may even be overly sen­si­tive. How­ever, it appears the unwrit­ten rule about kids not being appre­ci­ated here is known by many, just not us. One day I was hav­ing blood drawn at the hos­pi­tal, and my phle­botomist noticed my address. I had men­tioned hav­ing kids, and she said, “How is it liv­ing with kids there?” Because I live in a smaller town, I didn’t say much. I said that it’s a good loca­tion near a park, etc. She said, “I’ve heard that peo­ple there don’t like kids.”

   Also, as I said in a pre­vi­ous com­ment, I know for sure that my side of the story isn’t 100% accu­rate. There are always 3 sto­ries and only one is real­ity. This is my blog. It’s a place for me to vent and a place for me to share my thoughts. If you wanted to give advice, maybe you could have asked what we’d tried first.

8. On December 1st, 2009 at 3:38 pm Peter Says:

   Is there no way she could be unre­al­is­tic in her expec­ta­tions? It depends. If she’s lived there 40 years and this is her first noise com­plaint then maybe her expec­ta­tions are rea­son­able. Or maybe she com­plains every time a dog barks out­side her win­dow. I don’t know. Nor do I think it mat­ters. Whether an impar­tial judge would deem her com­plaints valid or not doesn’t change the fact that a] she feels wronged and b] inval­i­dat­ing her feel­ings isn’t going to help.

   Do I think you are overly sen­si­tive? No, I think you are expe­ri­enc­ing your own point of view. When my neigh­bor decided to blast his radio it pissed me off. Was he enti­tled to play his radio loud in the mid­dle of the day? Prob­a­bly. Did I think he was incon­sid­er­ate of his neigh­bors? Yes. But at the same time I’ve been that guy who says “Oh, it’s just kids being kids” when my own kids are mak­ing a bit of a pub­lic ruckus. So I know how we always feel jus­ti­fied — whichever side of the issue we find our­selves on. Maybe you feel like “We’re a nor­mal fam­ily and the kids are being nor­mal and no one is doing any­thing wrong so why is she pick­ing on me?” And maybe she feels like “I had a nice quiet life until those kids moved in.”

   Den­nis was a men­ace and Mr. Wil­son was a grump. Both were true.

   The ques­tion is what to do about it. I agree with another com­menter who said “Kill em with kind­ness.” If some­how these ladies could get to know you and your kids I bet the issue would go away.

9. On December 23rd, 2009 at 2:23 pm Heather @ Not a DIY Life Says:

   Casey, I want you to be MY neigh­bor! Most peo­ple don’t give a darn that their noise is affect­ing any­one else. And I have lived in places that I was cussed out because I DARED to men­tion that someone’s noise was both­er­ing me.

   You are con­sci­en­tious and you care about the peo­ple around you. That makes a good neighbor.

   I do agree with the kill them with kind­ness sug­ges­tion. Or ask the neigh­bor that you know well if they have a sug­ges­tion for deal­ing with the situation.

   Good luck!