“During COVID, my neighbor’s now three-year-old was an infant and cried all the time. The noise would reverberate between the buildings into all the apartments on our side. It completely pissed everyone off, but we all let it slide as it was during lockdowns,” began a post on an advice forum.
The disgruntled man asked the thread if he was wrong for recently complaining to the family after their new infant “carried on” in the same way.
“Attention-seeking whine”
“They are constantly crying, whining, moaning at all hours. But the parents keep their doors and windows open so the sound travels straight into all our apartments,” he explained.
“I get along famously with all the neighbors, and they’ve all said they’re getting fed up with the noise, too. We agreed that if they just shut their doors while the infant is shrieking, it would take the edge off things.”
“The other thing is that they let their kids stay up very late. It’ll be 11 p.m., and I’ll still hear the three-year-old banging on toys and the infant chiming in with an attention-seeking whine.”
The OP then concluded that the kids must not have a normal schedule so they’re irritable throughout the day, hence the crying.
He also adds some important context — he’s been recovering from a brain tumor and is more sensitive to noise than he would be normally.
“So when the kid shrieks, I really feel it deeply,” he says.
“I’m also getting my career back on track and working from home. I can’t count how many times the little demon spawn has screamed uncontrollably while I was on a video call or regular phone call.
“In general, all our neighbors are pretty good about speaking up when something bothers them. We don’t do passive aggression, and we all appreciate directness.”
So, when he crossed paths with the mother of the kids the other day, he knew it was his opportunity to speak up.
“I was polite and friendly. I told her I know it must be tough with young kids at home, and I asked her if she’d be kind enough to shut the doors when the kids are screaming and reopen them when they settle down. She looked awkwardly at me and was like, ‘Ok then’ (translation: how dare you ask me that),” he recalled.
Since this conversation, the mom is still leaving doors open when the kids scream, “so I assume that means her answer is no,” he deduces.
He then concludes his post: “I’ve been hesitant to make a bigger deal out of it even though it’s single-handedly disrupting the vibe across 17 other apartments. The issue is that the parents don’t seem to care about other residents and are not interested in trying to work with us. AITA for suggesting a solution to the mother?”
“Lunacy”
The commenters almost entirely agreed that he wasn’t in the wrong.
“NTA, it’s not your fault if someone else decides to have a kid. Also, if the kid is still playing in the night and constantly screaming, then that seems to imply that they aren’t good parents either, which sucks for the kid,” the top comment with 2.3k likes read.
Someone else suggested, “You’ve not done anything bad here. But you might consider crowdsourcing the solution. Talk with your neighbors and create a rotating schedule for people to go to their apartments when the baby is screaming. Ask them to shut their windows and doors to minimize disruption to the entire complex.”
“Involve building management immediately,” a different user advised.
“They are leaving doors open, which is lunacy. Obviously, that’s going to disturb the neighbors,” a final commenter wrote. “You asked, she was uncomfortable and that’s fine. In an ideal world, she’d be understanding and empathetic, but a person who would react that way wouldn’t leave the door open while their kid was having a meltdown. You just have to be comfortable with people being pissed off at you.”
