It has to take effort to be that loud. What are they doing up there!

Mommy doesn’t hear the same thing you do. To her, the footfalls are muffled. To you, because of the construction of her floor and your ceiling, you have a huge tympanic membrane amplifying the sounds that she hears as the patter of little feet.

@pdworkin I can assure you, this is more than the patter of little feet.

It sounds like you are living in a building with very poor sound insulation or there is no concrete divide between the floors. If this is the case, you would probably find out that they are not making as much noise as you think but more to the fact that the noise is being amplified through the floor boards and beams. You could ask the building officer to look into floor soundproofing which would be possible. In the meantime, get up earlier or buy ear plugs!

I’m certain that it is, for you. But not for her. Especially if she has carpeted floors. You are getting a lot of resonance.

I have 3 boys and we lived in an upstairs apartment for a while. Never again! The slightest noise transfers downstairs… let alone if the boys are jumping or hitting the walls. We constantly had people bickering at us about the noise to which we could only shrug and apologize. Boys will be boys.. I seriously doubt we’d be able to get them to tip toe around the house and not bang toys on things. xD

A solution may be to move this poor family to a first floor room where the noise won’t be such a bother.. maybe you should trade with them?

@jayvly I actually moved from another first floor apartment in the same complex and had upstairs neighbors there too. There was much less noise coming from them. The insulation theory is very plausible and I’ve taken that into consideration.

I don’t want to disrupt their lives, but I’m sure they wouldn’t like it if I blasted my stereo after the kiddos went to bed. As long as they can keep it down in the mornings, I’m not going to complain.

@NaturalMineralWater I actually thought about that, lol.

I feel sorry for anyone that lives below my family. My son is not quiet, and is a loud walker…toys fall off his table often, and he’s pretty clutzy. So, I imagine it was quite annoying for our old neighbors, but they never complained.

Do they have carpet? They should really put a rug down with having little kids. I’m sorry you have to deal with that.

@essieness The ground floor apartment you moved from may not have been “tuned” the same way so as to transmit the noise.

I heard the most amazing series of noises from upstairs the other day. I concluded that were bowling with their kids as the balls.

I once had a downstairs neighbor all the police when I was making scallopini.

We had some inconsiderate neighbors in an upstairs apartment when my daughter was a newborn. They lived in a small one bedroom and had about 8 people living in it. When my daughter was about a month old they were doing something up there one night, I have no clue what. Sounded like throwing bowling balls on the floor. They woke the baby and me, already being sleep deprived and crazy called the police. Of course, they didn’t show up for a noise disturbance on a Friday night, so I called the landlord. He showed up and found how many people they had living there. Needless to say, they moved out within a few days. Then the guy with a kick ass stereo moved in….
I nearly cried when we finally were able to afford a house and didn’t have to live attached to other people!

I have been in the apartment industry for over 20 years and I have still not unraveled the mystery of how a 30 pound kid walking can make more noise than a 200 lb man!!

@Judi Because a 200 lb man probably isn’t playing “spongebob goes to space” or “don’t step on the lava” ... (unless you’re me.. I love those games!)

i have heard sounds on the first floor of my quad-level home that “Booms” three floors up. i have a house full of three boys. just jumping out of bed can cause thunderous reactions floors below.

my oldest seems to think his rambling thru kitchen cabinets in the morning goes unnoticed, but the sound resonates throughout the whole house.

To be fair, you have to expect some amount of noise in apartment living.

The best you can do is contact management. Or you can request that proper insulation be installed in your apartment for the ceiling and walls. There are ways to soundproof an apartment but you’ll have to ask management’s permission to do that. Or you can request that your neighbor’s floor be soundproofed properly. You should send all requests in writing.

You can forfeit your deposit and move early. Next time get an apartment on the top floor. It may be more of a pain moving your stuff, but at least you won’t have to worry about noisy neighbors.

I have to chime in because I’m guilty of being the noisy neighbor from time to time. I actually find it very embarrassing and rude to be overly noisy but being a mom of a 22 month old its nearly impossible not to be. In addition there are concerns about my son having autism and some of the noisy things he does are related to those symptoms such as opening and closing (loudly not gently) every single cabinet in the house, every closet door and entry way as well gets slammed open and shut throughout the day several times. He throws tantrums where he literally throws his body headfirst with all his little might onto the floor making more banging noises, he bangs on walls, tables and other furniture. He romps around the house doing the “charlie brown” dance when hes excited and screeches on the top of his lungs when hes excited or upset. He bangs the lids of pans on the floor in an effort to spin hem like a top. Sadly we have not found a way to curb this behavior and intruding on it causes and even more loud violent reaction.

This may or may not be what going on above you but please consider that it may be out of your neighbors control and try to forgive her because she may be under more stress then she needs to be already. Perhaps some earplugs could help?