Living in a city doesn't always make it possible to be alone in a single-family home. Often, you don't have a choice but to have people living below you. My family has found ourselves in this situation, and in an effort to respect our neighbors and to also teach our kids ways to live in urban environments, we have put together a few tips to help minimize the noise we produce as a family.
1. Teach your kids to walk with "little feet". The idea is to show them to almost tip toe. We have made it a game in our house, and as soon as we're home it's one of the rules that our "big feet" are left outside. So we stomp like dinosaurs outside as much as we can, and try to dance like crazy on our tip toes once we're inside. It cracks my kids up to dance on their toes.
2. Make forts. Making forts is not a particularly loud activity, and once it's made it's also easy for it to be a reading nook, a hiding place etc.
3. Involve the kids in elaborate craft projects like making a cardboard pyramid or whole theme night, building a cardboard tree house, making and playing with a paper plate marble run, or decorating the bedroom with craft paper to make it look like a castle.
4. Determine a general quiet activity time, like drawing and reading times, or even puzzle time. These are quiet activities and are good to calm down after school and before dinner time. Obviously, children who are in the age of having homework will probably be busy doing that. Montessori ideas are great to look into for this purpose. We have a whole Montessori shelf that comes in handy after school. They get to choose what they want to work on, and the structure of such activities is always slow and measured, which makes them more quiet than not.
5. Talk with your neighbors. Tell them when your kids are home from school, and what time they go to bed, what time they wake up and when they leave for school. Ask them what their schedules are and try to figure out solutions to make things work for everybody's timings.
6. Involve your children in making dinner or cleaning and organizing the house. Not only does it help with them not running and jumping around, but it also teaches them to be part of the family.
7. Schedule some technology time for your kids, like listening to an audiobook, playing on the computer, or even watching a little TV, if you need to make dinner or prepare for school/work.
8. Run around outside before coming back inside. Bang on pots, jump in puddles, climb on trees, make snowmen, throw snow balls, plant and harvest, go to the pool, take them to karate and dance classes, etc… then come home after all the excess energy has been spent.
(images: Séverine Baron)
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You forgot the most obvious one, thick carpets or rugs, especially located where they are inclined to jump around.
Another not so obvious idea, we hung a swing in the play room from a ceiling joist, Its silent (when oiled) and the kids adore it, spend hours swinging while listening to audio books.
I wish our neighbors would read this. We both have small kids, but only their kids climb the tree between our tiny backyards and peer at us during dinner on the deck (or any meal on a nice day outside). If we are lucky, they don't also try to have a conversation with us while we try to eat.
I find the noise from the kids next door (thank god we don't share an apartment building) nice actually, kind of reassuring. But I don't understand why kids these days have to scream to have fun. Growing up granted I was kind of an artsy quiet child. But my peers never ran around screeching either unless they were in pain or scared. Having fun inside especially never involved being obnoxiously loud.
Oh my God, the screaming. I'm fine with normal happy kid noise, but my next door neighbor's kid spends whole days making a sound like a sea bird being electrocuted.
i rent in an old nyc apt w/tissue-thin walls, floors, and ceilings. no children or pets allowed, though we have both in the building--and they're noisy, we tenants are noisy, and we all put up with each other. my downstairs neighbor, however, seems to be particularly sensitive to my relative's 5-year-old who is special needs and quite active (runs on tiptoes) and visits me several times a year for a few days each time. the wood floor has two layers of thick, school-quality rubber tiles on it, am contemplating buying a third, but wonder if it will make any difference at all. don't have the budget for soundproofing, and we're all allergic, so carpeting is out of the question. and there comes a time in every day when things need to get done, dinner prepared, and we can't sit with this cutie to keep her from running. she weighs all of about 33#. when she's at home--in a properly constructed building--there are no noise problems. help please!
I go back and forth with this. I have never lived in a single family with my kids and we do so much to keep them quiet, but it's their home. We don't let them run around the house screaming (occasionally if our neighbor isn't home we will), we are aware of how heavy they are on their feet, etc. But they are kids-I don't want to limit them too much! And it doesn't offer incentive that our neighbor is crazy and has screaming matches with people regularly! I think she makes more noise than our kids!
I would add early bedtime. If kid noise ends by 7 or 8pm, that goes a LONG way.
I want to print this out and tape it to my upstairs neighbors' door.
Parnassus, LOL...
@Parnassus - Hahaha. I have heard something along those lines. Sometimes the parents yelling at the child is louder and far nastier than the child.
I try to keep my daughter respectful of other people's comfort. I'm very fortunate. Other than occasionally having to remind her to not stomp in her winter boots in the hallway she's very quite.
For nasty noises from my place, they're more at risk to hear me singing. So far nobody has called the humane society. So far...
Oops - "...very quiet."
Thanks for the tips--we live in a 2nd floor condo, are trying to adopt (likely a toddler or somewhat older child), and I've been dreading confrontations with my downstairs neighbor, who hates kids and moved here because she thought it would be kid-free. She's already complained once when our 6-year-old niece was over, just because she ran down the hall ONCE, to get a book, so I can only imagine what it's going to be like when we have a kid around full-time.
Hahaha!!! I can laugh now, but this is ex
Thank you for being so thoughtful! I wish my former upstairs neighbors were as considerate as you are. You're pretty awesome, and I hope your neighbors know how great they have it.
...exactly how my neighbor's kids sounded. Summer after summer....
When we first got married, we lived in a condo with one shared wall. The stairs were on that wall, as was our bedroom and the living room. The kids next door made a game of running down the stairs and jumping onto the landing between stairs. When they'd have parties, the kids would entertain themselves by doing this. There would be 10-15 kids each time.
Other than that, I don't think kid noises have ever bothered me.
thinking of passive aggressively emailing this to my neighbour. she and her kid are *downstairs* and yet the kid manages to make enough noise daily that my dishes audibly clink together for long periods of time. and the mother screams enough for the two of them. nice to see some solid tips on being a conscientious neighbour that still allows kids to have fun and be creative.
You don't have to be in an urban area to experience this. I lived in a suburban apartment complex for 17 years with the same neighbors upstairs. When the kids were little, they would run up and down the stairs, slamming doors on two levels. They would, I imagine, wrestle with their father, thump, bang, slam. We called them the elephant family. Then as they grew up, they got bigger, and the noise on the stairs only grew worse. I loved the place in spite of them, though. I'm out, they are still there.
I live in a single family and my neighbours kids are loud and scream-y. They also come over and pick my flowers and eat my strawberries. And I love it! Kids need to be kids. Yes, they must show some respect; I've asked my two little neighbours to, "just make sure they ask before they pick flowers or eat the strawberries..." and sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Eitherway, they are two of the sweetest little girls and if it makes their day brighter, they can scream and run in my yard with hands full of flowers and mouths full of berries. :)
Thank you for thinking this way! I for one don't mind a certain level of 'kid noise' during the day (though I think it is a good life lesson to leave your 'big feet' outside, I wish more adults learned that as kids).I would say if you do need to pick, work on just keeping the noise down after 7 or 8 or so, during the evening winding down, getting ready for bed time is when most people care the most.
My only other suggestion would be that if it is at all possible, don't put a wee one's bed against a shared wall. I do realize this isn't always possible, so if you can't avoid it that's how it goes, but seriously, nothing cuts straight through walls and wakes a person from a dead sleep like baby cries and if the crib is right against the shared wall it's that much worse. I learned this from experience.
We live in an older apartment and you can hear things you wish you wouldn't from the neighbors. We have a 10 month old. Our downstairs neighbors have a 1 year old. I used to try hard to keep my son from banging on the floor and hushing him quickly if he was crying. But after months of being kept awake or woken up at 1, 2, 3am by a child (in shoes) running back and forth, guitar hero, loud parties or other unsavory unmentionable noises, I really could care less what my son does. I don't even feel bad anymore when we wake them up at noon because my son is banging his maracas on the wood floor above their bedroom.
I feel sorry for my downstairs neighbor. My son LOVES to pop wheelies with his plastic bike on our wooden floors.. But we've managed to come around that. We hide the bike in the evenings, & he plays with it outside in the day. Other than that, we are a LIVING breathing HAPPY family.... so expect noise... we dance in our lounge, exercise there and watch movies on surround sound too.. not everyday, not all day, but some days & most wknds. And to my other neighbor who rev's his box bmw endlessly.... YOU GO BOY. If thats what gets you going for the day, il just accommodate it. lol (ps: this is in south africa)