Trying to Be Pretty Good Neighbors
Are nasty neighbors affecting your home’s value? asks a report today on ABC news.
I’ll be honest—we do tend to be neighbors who can be noisy, though never in the form of blasting loud music, wild parties, and the like. Neighbors have had to hear us (occasional, and less frequent in than in the past) hollering “Charlie” and Charlie himself in moments of true distress and anxiety. We’ve been in a second-floor rental this year, and the neighbor below has indicated that there’s a bit too much stomping going on. We’ve bought extra throw rugs and try to get Charlie to leave the stomping for outside—-he’s a very active kid and really needs to run around. So we’ll be moving when the lease is up in early September.
Good thing we’re not doing all the home therapy hours that we used to with a daily stream of at least two therapists every day………
Tags: apartment, asd, asperger, autism, autism blog, Family, family blog, home, kids, kids blog, neighbors, noise, pdd-nos, rentalRelated Stories
POSTED IN: A few more recent comments, Living Arrangements
20 opinions for Trying to Be Pretty Good Neighbors
Bonnie Sayers
Jun 8, 2008 at 5:26 pm
In August it will be ten years renting this duplex house. The neighbors off to the side that I did not know existed when first moved in since he driveway is for the house and then they are the back house. This area of Los Angeles has many back houses you did not see until you were near a window and wondered who that was!
Anyway, their adult sons and all their friends are bald with tatoos and it looks like a prison yard in summer time and the therapist last year had a hard time coming into our yard as they all stood against my fence and had a dog. Sometimes they even park a truck on the sidewalk blocking my exit and entrance and there is the dope smoking and beer drinking going on.
I am so tired of it and my son cannot take out garbage because they are there and opening the front door means they are there in our sight and Matt is screaching at the door and that stench is coming in.
I look almost every day at craigslist searching for something, but utilities are paid here and that is good and need to drive around areas to see what they have as would not want to move from one situation to another one that could be worse.
Our rent is still less than one bedrooms in the area. Our windows are open all the time and you can hear Matt down the street and early in the AM.
If we move than Nick will be sad about all the feral cats we feed and the family of skunks and the racoons that visit. They can all stay behind and bug the neighbors.
Andrea
Jun 8, 2008 at 6:28 pm
I remember living in a second floor apartment. We moved there just before Gus was born (literally just before) and there was an eccentric old woman living downstairs. We got along pretty well. But then she passed away and the apartment was empty for about a year (heaven). Not long after Gus’s diagnosis, a single 40-something woman moved downstairs, with full knowledge that there was a family with small children, one with special needs, living upstairs. She chose to take it anyway and…it didn’t go very well. We moved before it could turn to all out war. Gus needed a new school district anyway, so we would have had to anyway. Now we live in a townhouse and it’s the neighbors next door who we have to worry about. They’ve been fairly understanding though. I’ll cross my fingers.
Regan
Jun 8, 2008 at 7:39 pm
We live (fortunately) in a detached house with some berth between houses (we had always lived in close quarter apartments before the kids were born). Earlier our home was much noisier and I had to talk to my neighbors about what was going on, why there would be a lot of folks coming and going to work with Eleanor, explaining middle of the night blowouts of crying, etc. It’s an old and established neighborhood with older folks, and I was pleasantly surprised in the circumstances at how understanding and interested in a helpful way our neighbors were and have continued to be. They are much more concerned with the houses that (on occasion) have college students who like to hold overflow keggers, or the folks who have complicated living arrangements. We all kind of pitch in on keeping an eye out there.
But I understand the noise thing. We have a list of motels that we kept, not for the amenities but for the ease of getting a first floor room, the arrangement of rooms relative to the one next door and the thickness of the walls. It’s not much of a consideration now, but when Eleanor was younger it was a priority.
Leanne
Jun 8, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Often I’ve been thankful that we live in a small bungalow on a large acreage of property in the country. Oh, the noise my neighbours would have had to put up with….let’s just say I wouldn’t have wanted to be my own neighbour when Patrick was younger.
Chris Gennaula
Jun 8, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Well, there has been no restraining order… yet. Totally agree with @Leanne–except we live in a small bungalow in the city.
Chris Gennaula
Jun 8, 2008 at 9:14 pm
BTW–the last comment was suppose to have a :) in it.
Jane S
Jun 8, 2008 at 9:15 pm
One issue we had to deal with when my daughter was younger was her inflexibility to changes. She would scream loud and long when my neighbour came out of her own house to sit on her own deck. It was a nightmare.
Bonnie
Jun 8, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Our neighbors aren’t so friendly, and I fear that they have heard us yelling to get his attention (the houses are very close in our neighborhood) or at each other as pressures of parenthood can cause us to do. I sometimes feel that having a child with Autism can make you a pariah, but then, who cares, I wouldn’t hang out with these folks if they were nice. (I have a house whose backyard butts up to mine, and in lys 3 boys with varying degrees of Autism, and their mom is all the neighbor I need)
Melody
Jun 8, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Heh. My house was pretty noisy growing up, three girls including me. But who would complain about the daytime screaming and yelling and running around? At least we don’t hear gunshots at night like our last apartment.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jun 8, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I remember when Charlie was first diagnosed—it seemed that overnight we became “the family with [the special child]” on the block.
We had to move into the place we are living fairly quickly, so we didn’t have much of a choice about location. Because we’re on the second floor and because of where the condo is located, there’s no front window with a view of the parking lot where the car is—-not a good thing with Charlie liking to be in and out. I think I’ve figured out (finally) the kind of place we need, and a window looking out to the front with easy access to the door is crucial—-and a first floor place.
Marla
Jun 8, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Yes! We have major neighbor problems here. Don’t get me started! Ugh!
abfh
Jun 9, 2008 at 12:37 am
One of my earliest memories is jumping on my bed with my sister, all sorts of gleeful thumping and bumping and giggling, until the guy in the downstairs apartment walked up the stairs and started banging on the door and shouting some very nasty stuff at my mom.
mayfly
Jun 9, 2008 at 1:49 am
When we lived in an upstairs condo our daughter’s continual stomping and daily upturning of tables drove our downstairs neighbors crazy. Our attempts to stop it only seemed to result i more.
One night after our daughter was in bed, the smoke alarm went off. I went to check and saw a cloud of steam. The trail led to the bathroom where she had turned on the hot water faucet. The water on the floor was inches deep. I went down and woke up the neighbors who had retired early. A sheet of water was falling from their y ceiling.
This and being told by her teacher, “No one wants to work with your daughter” convinced us we had to move.
We overpaid for the house, the agent said the could convince the seller not to put in one the market, but to offer it to us. We knew renting an option, and we wanted a single story out of concern for our daughter’s safety. We paid for the house as if it had been completely remodeled, when the owners had done nothing but cosmetics such as painting over wallpaper.
Buying it was one of the best things we’ve done. The stomping lasted about a week. We didn’t try to stop it and it soon became extinct. Also the stomping did not produce such a loud noise. But I think it was more dependent on my wife and me being able to relax instead of trying to stop the stomping so our neighbors could have some peace.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jun 9, 2008 at 2:11 am
@Marla, I was thinking of you and your neighbors when I wrote this!
@abfh, the guy downstairs is not happy with us.
@mayfly, I think one reason for moving is just to feel less stressed — I still have a lot of my books and things in bags and boxes as it is.
Andrea
Jun 9, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Oh it is hard to find good neighbors…and even harder to be one! We lucked into 2 retired special ed teachers when we moved in to this house 7 years ago. They made it quite welcoming but have since left. So many stories to tell… the good the bad and the ugly…http://www.autismunplugged.blogspot.com/search/label/neighbor
Navi
Jun 15, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Our current neighborhood is really nice, and everyone is very friendly, and understanding.
We lived in an apartment a few years ago, and my son would kick the metal heaters. and my upstairs neighbor complained that I couldn’t control my son. I started putting mattresses against it (they were the steam vent heaters, so it wasn’t a fire risk)… then the same neighbor is doing tae bo or something on an evening when the kids are going psycho and my husband wasn’t feeling well… thump.. thump.. thump.. thump.. thump.. thump.. (I had to have their godmom come over and help because I was practically having an anxiety attack) a few months later, the neighbor catches up to me and apologizes, now his son is 18 months old and doing all sorts of crazy things and he understands you can’t always ‘control’ a kid…
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lisa
Sep 28, 2008 at 2:52 pm
How can we approach our neighbors about the noise coming from their autistic child without offending them? We live in a duplex condo and share an adjoing wall.
Lisa
Kristina Chew, PhD
Sep 29, 2008 at 2:01 am
@Lisa,
Hi—have you tried to speak to them about it at all? I need to think on this more and have to say I really appreciate your query. I suspect that just saying “the noise has to stop”—however much that is the case (I am sure the family wishes it would, too)—may not help. I’m inclined to think that the family is trying, and that it is very hard. Perhaps acknowledging this might be a way to start a conversation and note the noise in the course of it?—–I will write more.
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