We have been living in this duplex for about a year without having complained even once about our neighbors. Our neighbors have three children. The parents (mostly mother) are often screaming at them, and we have always been understanding of the noise and doing our best to ignore the sounds of screaming from everyone. Including huge fights the parents (though, rarely) have. We especially considered that moms are doing a lot of legwork.
However, recently they have been dragging around their dinner table(?) some kind of heavy furniture at late hours and their children have been awake until late hours (yesterday at 23:45) playing and slamming themselves against the wall we share. We didn’t want to involve the landlord or police, so we decided to make a visit today after a month of the furniture and sounds of late night playing.
We asked the mother very politely (my partner is Japanese and did the talking) if they could keep it down, particularly with the table/noise near the wall at least after 10pm. We even told her to put a note in our post if we are also loud and we’d adjust (we are out the house from 7:30am until 7-8pm though). She looked very clearly angry and told us they are children and she can’t stop them (didn’t mention the furniture dragging noise). When we returned to our home as she was yelling on the phone complaining about us and was dragging her table around. This morning she was making loud sounds on purpose. I’m not an expert on how to deal with the aftermath of confrontation, but I’m afraid of the retaliation and now regret this. I know moving out is the only real solution. In about a year, we should be able to move, but for now it’s financially difficult as one of us is a grad student.
A friend suggested it would be in our best interest to document the sounds for now then go to the landlord in case they get angrier? I know kids are kids. I thought it was a reasonable ask, but now I feel like an asshole.
by potatocheesefry