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Monday, July 07, 2008

Tiptoe Through the Living Room

Not only does the title to this entry not scan, I can't sing it the way Tiny Tim would, and besides, it isn't really so charming. What has me thinking about walking on little cat feet? This article in the New York Times, which is guaranteed to raise hackles everywhere and of course it will be another extremely divisive question where the pro-kid will be turned against the anti-kid and people will begin lobbying for child-free apartment buildings and rail and scream about the injustice each party is doing to the other.

A loyal reader read this piece and asked if I could comment on it. Happily (or unhappily depending, I suppose on your perspective), I am working on a project that deals with exactly this sort of question and am ready to jump in. So I shall.

The short, cranky answer to this is really that people should behave reasonably and learn to treat each other like grown ups. There is simply no way around it in the city. If you live in an apartment building you will hear your neighbors. You will hear their kids, their pets, their sex lives, their music, their hobbies, their joys, their sadnesses, their car horns, their car ALARMS, their smoke detectors (when their breakfasts burn), their alarm clocks, their parties and their wakes. It is the way of it. If you truly can't abide contact with other people at all, it would be best to live elsewhere.

This does not mean that everyone should just have license to run around making noise at all hours and being revolting, but it does mean that compromise must be sought and once that compromise has been found, peace should settle.

The article interviews a number of people in apartments (expensive ones but this doesn't really matter since noise is a Quality of Life issue and shouldn't be one that only the wealthy deserve to have protected... though I guess the article is implying loudly that the rich feel entitled to demand) about how loud kids are and how neighbors demonstrate such hatred for the tots that parents are afraid to let their children run in the house and develop nervous tics and hate spending time at home.

I sympathize all the way around. I have been a loud child (I am now cringing when I think of my long suffering next door neighbor). I have been child free living beneath children (though I haven't really been too bothered by them) and I now have kids and worry (and am beyond happy that the place we are supposed to move into has very thick walls and floors). I think this is an issue of doing the best you can.

One woman in the article is angry because the kids above her wake her up by running around before her usual rising hour of 8:00 AM. I see nothing wrong with asking the parents of the children, nicely, if they could keep the pitter patter to a minimum until eight o' clock or thereabouts. But I think to resort to open hostility is ridiculous and if it is that big a problem, the people who feel most offended should consider moving. I speak as someone who lived six floors above a jazz club for many years. I have two words for Miss Eight O'Clock and they worked for my sibling who until recently was child free and very sensitive to noise: EAR PLUGS.

Do I sound annoyed? I am. I'm partially irritated that this story has been semi-manufactured by the Times (surely this has gone on forever). And I suppose my hackles are up because I have been the person to run out of a hotel room before dawn has broken, a whimpering baby in my arms to wander on a beach for hours because our neighbors didn't seem to like us. I couldn't even look at them when they tried to be nice because I was so full of resentment but at the same time I understood that they were thinking: "We don't have a baby, so why should we have to hear one at all when we're on vacation?" And they didn't. I hate the fact that people want to draw such strong battle lines when there are things one can do.

So, putting aside the fact that I am a parent and thinking about this issue in terms of etiquette, what is to be done?

If you are being woken up, ask your neighbors if the noise could be kept to a minimum until a reasonable hour. (I think that most people need to be up by eight or eight thirty for work, for instance and if you are a shift worker, you should consider discovering ways to do some sound-proofing yourself.)

Come up with modifications. Can you move your bed? Could you use ear plugs? Could you put down carpet or insist your children wear slippers in the house?

If you are parents, you should keep the noise levels in mind, especially in the early morning and on weekends. This may mean having to invest in a thicker rug in one room and you may need to come up with some less noisy games the children can play. (This, by the way, has entered our lives and both of the children love it so much they forget to try to climb the walls.)

Remember that it will end. The kids will go to day care or school and the racket won't be daily and will gradually become occasional.

Try to remember that the people around you don't exist to make you miserable. Ask nicely, be understanding. Let your neighbors know if you're going to be loud (as the sleep training people did in the article) or if you have something pressing that means you need sleep. Be proactive instead of simmering.

I'll shut up now. I'm getting all annoyed about the sighs people gave when they saw me lurching down an airplane aisle with my kids. As if it was going to be a party at 30,000 feet anyway.

posted by Elise at 4:36 PM

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2 Comments:

Laura K. Curtis said...

I don't live in an apartment, and I don't have kids. I do, however, have dogs and live in a town where people like their yards. We try to keep our dogs' barking to a minimum (if they bark for more than a few minutes, they get brought inside), and we try to be patient when others don't observe the rules of courtesy. The same can't be said for others, however. Some people live to be annoyed...if it weren't the kids in the apartment above them, it would be something else.

7/08/2008 1:25 PM

Anonymous said...

You are the UN High Commissioner of Urban Mothers. May you have the fortitude to continue serving as such as the wee ones age, lest you're pressed to hand in the towel and head to the 'burbs as so many of us across the country have, and not necessarily for worse. Bon chance!

7/08/2008 9:40 PM

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