I’m American and my wife is Japanese. We have two young kids (4 and 2) and reside in the USA.
Here in the States, I would say our kids are about average in terms of volume. Throughout the day they run around, cry, shout, or don’t use their inside voices, but they don’t scream continuously or anything. They mostly sleep through the night and are quiet from 7pm-7am more or less.
My wife is afraid of taking our kids to Japan as we would likely stay in her parents’s Tokyo apartment. She thinks our kids would instantly attract lots of complaints from neighbors. She claims that Japanese children are just quieter either naturally or through stricter parenting.
I kinda think kids are kids and they are loud regardless of nationality, and it seems like there would be plenty of boisterous 4 and 2 year olds in Japan.
In your experience, are Japanese children notably quieter than their American counterparts?
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/1105eb7/a_question_about_kids_and_noise/
3 comments
Kids are way more quiet if they live anywhere that requires the parents to constantly remind them to be quiet. That’s not just a Japan thing it’s a parent thing.
That generally is what kids are taught in Japan and your wife is definitely not alone with her thinking. However, what’s she gonna do, never bring them to Japan cause of her fear they’ll make too much noise? Japan needs kids direly. If the neighbors can’t handle it they can move to the countryside.
>My wife is afraid of taking our kids to Japan as we would likely stay in her parents’s Tokyo apartment.
How old is the apartment? Some apartments are much quieter than others. Old ones are terrible; the walls are like paper, but newer ones are usually better.