Children are loud. Neighbors get annoyed. What can a family do?
Six years ago, in the haze of new motherhood, Adrianne Wright found herself facing an unexpected problem: a disgruntled neighbor.
Her daughter had been born nine weeks premature. “There was a lot going on, understandably, from getting used to this new chapter to dealing with some of the health complications that she was experiencing, with […] noisy machines at home to monitor breathing.” The last thing Wright, the founder of the communications agency Think Rosie, wanted was to receive noise complaints from the neighbor living below her brownstone apartment in New York City’s Park Slope neighborhood.
Parents have raised kids in close quarters for as long as there have been apartments. While there are many ways to prepare for parenthood, nothing quite prepares apartment dwellers for the cranky neighbors that may take issue with mundane kid noises – but it happens. In the United States, a country that feels increasingly hostile toward kids – with pushes for kid-free restaurantsand flights – what’s a parent raising their child in a shared space to do?
Wright tried to soundproof the apartment with carpets, “but there was only one button for the machine” and its sole setting was loud. The neighbor still complained, and escalated to complaints of hearing footsteps coming from Wright’s apartment, too. “Nobody wants to be a bad neighbor. And I think especially when you are a parent, and a new parent, and you already have this anxiety that you’re doing everything wrong with your kid and wanting to make sure that you’re doing everything right,” said Wright. “Then you have this background distraction and noise saying, ‘Your kid is being too loud.’”
Wright was surprised to find the disgruntled neighbor was a mother, too, with two young kids. Wright’s attempts to forge a connection, through coffee drops and hallway chitchat, were rebuffed, however. “We ended up talking to our landlord about it just to give him a heads up because we also weren’t sure if we were getting complaints about it,” said Wright. The landlord was supportive, which gave them a modicum of comfort until the neighbor below moved away, and Wright and her family eventually relocated to Nashville.
In Atlanta, Robin Cathey, 39, and her husband eschew the notion of suburban living for their family. Instead, they’re raising their three-year-old son in a 670 sq ft, two-bedroom apartment in a central part of the city. Cathey, who works for a local university, and her husband lived in Japan previously, where the dwellings tend to run smaller. “We really wanted to be within the city. We wanted to be able to walk places and do things,” she said. “It’s a tiny place, but it would’ve been smaller in Japan. So that’s what we sell ourselves.”
Once her son began walking, however, his presence didn’t go over so well with the downstairs neighbor, who had lived in the building for 20 years. “He would just pitter-patter all over the place. Did not know how to walk, just ran everywhere,” recalled Cathey. “We would hear her yelling, ‘Walk!’ from downstairs.”
It created an uncomfortable situation for Cathey and her family. For example, Cathey wanted to exercise from home, but didn’t want to risk upsetting the neighbor. “I’d try to see when she’d leave and then I wouldn’t have to be on top of my son about running,” she said. “I felt bad telling my son to be quiet all the time and popping pacifiers in his mouth.”
She tried to mitigate the noise with carpets on the hardwood floors and white noise machines – some parents have tried giving those machines to neighbors as a goodwill gesture or putting bookshelves on shared walls to muffle sound. But there’s only so much one can do living in a 1950s apartment building. The neighbor never approached them directly, but would say things like: “There goes the runner,” when they passed each other outside, and continued to yell from downstairs. Eventually the neighbor moved on, and the new one hasn’t complained. “Now we have a wonderful downstairs neighbor who just graduated college and says it’s quieter than the dorm she used to live in,” said Cathey.
Apartment dwellers sometimes find themselves in dangerous situations with their neighbors over the issues of kids’ noises. Earlier this year in Florida, a family was allegedly poisoned by a downstairs neighbor who had previously complained, NBC News reports. Xuming Li, the downstairs neighbor, was accused of injecting narcotics gas into Umar Abdullah’s apartment, where he lived with his wife and baby. Li was arrested when Abdullah’s wife and daughter began vomiting and surveillance footage revealed Li’s alleged crime.
While this example is extreme, even less serious conflicts are still uncomfortable and can lead to sticky legal situations if not resolved. Richard Merritt, a staff attorney with Atlanta Legal
Aid Society’s Housing Stability Project, works with renters facing eviction for a variety of reasons and the first thing he advises is to look at the lease. Though families with children are generally protected under the Fair Housing Act (for example, they can’t be denied housing or steered to first-floor dwellings), their rights aren’t always so cut and dried.
“I meet with tenants at the courthouse a lot, and quite often they come in, I listen to the story, and it might be something like what you’re describing. My next question is: ‘What does the lease say?’” said Merritt. Provisions in the lease could be used against the parent by a misguided apartment manager, but Merritt, who works on numerous eviction cases, hasn’t seen any over loud children. “I like to think that most people are working these things out without having to resort to this process,” he said.
Though it was about 11 years ago, Beth Collins clearly remembers the challenges of raising her firstborn in a Missouri apartment. “Being on the second floor was challenging for other people because we had a small child who would run around the apartment sometimes,” said Collins, a middle school teacher who now lives in Solano county, California, with her four children. The neighbors below her complained through the landlord.
“It didn’t feel great, but at the same time, what were we supposed to do?” Collins said. “It’s the situation of having a small child. They get excited about things, they run around, they should be allowed to do that.” Fortunately for her, the issues never escalated beyond the landlord’s phone calls, thanks to a rotating cast of downstairs neighbors.
Sometimes it’s a matter of mutually assured destruction, so to speak. Jamie Hawk, a career coach, moved from Atlanta to New York with her husband and two kids (ages four and six) over the summer.
Hawk, 38, sought a ground-floor apartment because she knew her boys
would be noisy and she wanted to curb any issues ahead of time. While living on the ground floor of their Bushwick apartment building allows more freedom for noise-making, Hawk finds her family surrounded by twentysomethings. Above them is a jazz band that lives together and practices every afternoon, and next door is a group of guys who throw loud parties.
“The reason why all of this is fine with me is because we’re loud as hell and no one can say squat to us,” says Hawk. “I’d rather move to a noisy place because I know my kids fight, run, stomp and we get up crazy early. But because everyone else is so dang loud, I know for a fact that they’re not going to say anything to us, and they haven’t.” While ground-floor apartments can put dwellers at risk of flooding and are less secure, it’s a chance Hawk is willing to take.
Wright and her family, which now includes a second child, moved back to New York in August, residing in a different Brooklyn brownstone. Now, there’s a professor living beneath them. Wright still uses carpets to help reduce the noise and keeps her kids’ karaoke sessions to a minimum, but, so far, the professor living beneath them shows far more empathy and Wright occasionally checks in with her. While the professor acknowledges that sometimes she hears the kids, she reassures Wright not to worry about it. “So that kind of compassion and kindness just makes me want to try even harder to make sure that we keep the sound down,” said Wright.
When it comes to parents and neighbors living in close quarters, Wright urges people to form a personal connection. Without knowing what another person is going through, it’s easy to feel rattled by noises and to let frustration fester. “Knowing somebody, and trying to create a connection and establish community with them: isn’t that what we all need at the end of the day?”
Nobody wants to be a bad neighbor
for two weeks to confirm the treatment has worked. I thought he was joking. He was like, “We’ll pay you!” And it all went from there. By that time I wasn’t as freaked out by them. I react violently to the bites, so it’s easy to tell when they have all gone. I’m always well stocked with antihistamines.
Normally I’m asked to sleep in hotel beds, as they obviously can’t take paying customers until the problem is gone. I’ve also slept in student accommodation and private residences that people rent out. I only need to sleep over in the night – I always bring separate bedroom clothes – but it turns out they’re often rather nice hotels. So, after my first night in a hotel, I went home, packed a bag and said to my family: “I’m not coming back for two weeks.”
That first time, I stayed up in the night and was hypervigilant. I did end up with a couple of bites, but managed to catch all the bugs. And then I had 12 more nights’ sleep in a lovely hotel, and didn’t get bitten again.
Some hotels have a special monitoring system so they know what to look for, and they’ll get in touch with us. If they need someone to sleep over, I’ll get a phone call: “Want to sleep with bedbugs?” To which my reply is normally: “How nice is the hotel?” It’s a weird job. Not a lot of people are willing to do it – I’m the only one I know of at the moment. On a recent job I came away with 30 bites, including three on my face.
I always take a sleep bra and big knickers with me, because they will go to the first available bit of flesh. So if you’ve got some parts covered they’ll find somewhere else. Cycling shorts are good as they’re tight down to the knees. One of my essentials is sticky tape. I usually put loads of little strips on the headboard so I’ve got them handy. Once you capture the bug on the tape, you then fold it over and seal the edges because they will wriggle free if they have the chance. Then I’ve got a live sample to send to the office. When I get home, I go straight to the garage. I’ll strip down, my clothes will go in the washing machine and I’ll jump straight in the shower.
Before all this, I thought bedbugs were a thing of the past. But now, with this job, I’ve learned a lot more about the sneaky little buggers than I ever bargained for.
• As told to Naomi Larsson Piñeda. Do you have an experience to share? Email experience@theguardian.com
even if we gave them away in the first place?
1 and 2. The Resolute Desk/Churchill’s Bust (The White House, Washington DC)
Queen Victoria’s 1880 gift of a “partner’s desk” made from the oak timbers of Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute to President Rutherford B Hayes has been used in the Oval Office by the last five presidents. So, especially given the Diet Coke/burger stains that 45 probably added, quite enough time has passed to ask for it back. Oh, and while we’re at it, we’ll take Jacob Epstein’s 1947 bronze bust of Winston Churchill as well, especially as Barack Obama contentiously moved it out of the Oval Office.
3. London Bridge (Lake Havasu City, Arizona)
Although the UK apocryphally conned American developer Robert P McCulloch into acquiring John Rennie’s 1831 edifice rather than the expected Tower Bridge, we can still forcefully request its return. Especially as it has since become associated with both Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes in the TV movies Bridge Across Time (1985) and The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1987) respectively.
Tapestry (Bayeux,
4. Bayeux France)
An absolute no-brainer. Made and designed in the UK by Anglo-Saxon artists and seamstresses and said to contain coded anti-Norman messages, the tapestry is an integral part of this island’s history. Surely natural justice demands the return of this iconic drapery, perhaps to adorn King Charles III’s private apartments at one of his many estates, or better still, cut into segments and sold off.
5. The Queen Mary (Long Beach, California)
The stately Cunard liner RMS Queen Mary (launched in 1934) has spent far too long slumming it as a tourist attraction (1967-) in California’s seedy Long Beach and would be far better placed moored off Canvey Island, with steerage and lower decks used to house “illegals”. Sunak could plausibly demand the QM’s return solely due to the lèse-majesté of Frank Sinatra setting his 1966 heist flick Assault on a Queen aboard the vessel.
6. The SS Mendi Bell (South Africa)
The South African troopship SS Mendi sank off the Isle of Wight on 21 February 1917 when accidentally rammed by the Royal Mail packet-boat SS Darro. In 2018, then PM Theresa May handed the ship’s bell to President Cyril Ramaphosa at a ceremony in Cape Town. As it was in British maritime waters, an overly generous gesture, Sunak may conclude.
7. The Franklin wrecks of HMS Terror and HMS Erebus (Canada)
Only discovered in 2014 and 2016, these previously lost early 19-century Arctic exploration ships were abandoned in 1848 on an expedition through the northwest passage with all crew members presumed dead. In 2018 defence secretary Gavin Williamson gifted the remains to Canada. The voyage was the subject of the AMC drama series The Terror, which depicted the vessel being haunted by the monstrous spirit polar bear Tuunbaq. So we may ask that, if found, the beast’s frozen corpse should be deposited with Sir Gavin for safekeeping.
8. Anglo-Saxon silver (Denmark)
Danegeld, they called it. Overcharging, the UK government may say, as there’s supposedly more AngloSaxon silver in Denmark than in Great Britain, taken from this fair isle by the Vikings. Time for a refund and compensation for this early form of EU-style chicanery.
9. The Vercilli Book (Italy)
The oldest of the four Old English Poetic Codices (the others being the Exeter Book in Exeter Cathedral Library, the Junius manuscript in the Bodleian Library, and the Nowell Codex in the British Library) has been languishing in Vercilli, Piedmont, since at least 1218. Bearing in mind Rishi’s friendship with Italian far right PM Meloni, isn’t it time to bring this one home?
10. Henry VIII’s letters to Anne Boleyn (the Vatican)
Sneaky, smut-obsessed Catholic clergy allegedly stole these entirely private missives to thwart Henry VIII’s attempted annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. As leader of the Tory party, Sunak has a duty to protect the confidential musings of those who lead the ship of state. So, hand ’em over, Francis.
11. AA Milne’s actual Winnie-thePooh (New York)
Like Paddington Bear (isn’t he Peruvian?) Winnie-the-Pooh is an British icon. So to find the poor fellow and friends Tigger, Piglet, Kanga, and Eeyore on display in New York’s Public Library is nothing short of a disgrace. We say free the Pooh Five – prisoners in Manhattan since 1956!
12. Captain Cook’s Yorkshire Cottage (Melbourne, Australia)
In order to commemorate the man who claimed to have discovered Australia, Cook’s North Yorkshire cottage was moved lock, stock and barrel to Melbourne in 1934. OK, so Cook never actually lived there – it was built by his parents. But surely we can swap it for some stolen Indigenous Australian artefacts?