Screaming child

[topmount]

You seem to have neighbors without sense. If they don't want to adapt, it will be difficult to force them to do so. The most important thing then is to ensure that you experience as little stress as possible because of this. Put the baby in your bedroom if it helps and then try to place the neighbor's annoyance next to you without getting upset about it.

Then there are, of course, a few other things you can do. If the ball ends up in your garden, they are not allowed to come in to retrieve it, and no one says you need to throw it over the fence the same evening; doing it in the morning is soon enough. Then it's a good idea to water the lawn in the evening, and it's not always possible to avoid the sprinkler also spreading on the neighbor's lawn. Not so fun to jump on a wet trampoline.

My kids water the trampoline themselves, apparently, it bounces better then, so your tip might have the opposite effect.

 

[Fairlane]

The children have shot up our other neighbor's cars.

If the parents don't realize the problem after such things, then it's probably a lost cause to get them to understand anything. A police report on that, of course, but it's the neighbor who does it, not you.

Escalating and retaliating I usually consider the wrong path to take, but here I might think about it anyway, of course with legal means.

 

[topmount]

But a 9-month-old baby waking up from children's cries? Are you sure it's the cries that wake the child up? The 9-month-olds I've spent time with can sleep through most sounds but wake up for many other reasons.

 

[Mathias Steinmo]

But a 9-month-old baby waking up from children's screams? Are you sure it's the screams waking the child? The 9-month-old children I have been around can sleep through most loud noises but wake up for many other reasons.

When the children are outside and we are trying to put her to sleep, she opens her eyes as soon as the kids, about 6 of them on a trampoline, scream. On certain occasions, we've had to sleep with our daughter in the hallway outside the bedroom.

 

[ricebridge]

We have also thought about wall absorbers to slightly reduce the clear high sounds.

No no no, that's a waste of money! Wall absorbers dampen the sound that is already inside a room, but they do not insulate against the sound that is outside of it.

In all sound problems, it is very important to first understand this difference between sound damping and sound insulation. Think of it this way. Your car has a muffler; it dampens the sound your car produces, and when you're out driving, you don't hear much of it. But if a car with a broken muffler comes along, you'll still hear it, then it's just the sound insulation in the doors and body of your own car that keeps the sound out.

When it comes to soundproofing, you must block both airborne sound and impact sound. Airborne sound is what we hear as sound waves travel through the air and set it in motion in a way that our ears can perceive it. Impact sound, on the other hand, is when sound waves travel through materials other than air, like the structure of your house. These set the material in motion in the same way, which then moves the air in your house so your ears hear it. This is much harder to stop because somehow you have to either get the materials to stop vibrating (which is practically impossible) or prevent their vibrations from becoming sound waves in the air inside your house.

A classic method is to insulate the walls as follows:
1. A few cm air gap between the existing wall and new insulation (to break impact sound).
2. Steel studs (to reduce impact sounds; wood transmits impact sounds better).
3. Thick insulation in multiple layers with overlapping joints.
4. Two layers of gypsum board with overlapping joints.

However, one should remember that not only walls can behave this way. All matter can be made to vibrate in such a way. It can be, for example, impact sound spreading via floors or ceilings. These are much harder to deal with. Since the house is from the 70s and transmits high frequencies like children's screams, I guess you have a concrete structure, so the whole building becomes one big resonator.

We've already talked about windows, but there are also sound-insulating glasses that are quite effective (we have those). Regular double-glazed windows are like an open door in terms of sound, but you didn't have that.

Then there's the matter of wave propagation in gaps. Simply put: if there is the slightest gap in the total insulation, you might as well punch a hole in it all. A keyhole or an unsealed frame is enough to degrade sound insulation. As others have pointed out, ventilation systems are common culprits. Put your ear to it and listen! Often, the sound is further amplified by the ventilation duct itself, which acts like a trumpet.

But if you block the ventilation, you'll encounter other problems, so unfortunately this is a matter of compromise. It is said that you can build sound-dampened ventilation ducts, but I've never tested it.

Finally, another option: There are earmuffs for children. Getting children used to sleeping with them on is highly beneficial later in life when they find themselves in other noisy environments.

As a parent, I can also add that it IS possible to get children used to sleeping even with noise and movement around them. They will benefit from this later in life too.

 

[Abbesnabb]

Maybe you can check if more neighbors experience this as a problem. We had something similar with kids jumping on a trampoline through the nights last summer (our children had to switch bedrooms to the other side of the house but it helped little since the trampoline kids moved on to playing ball and shouting on the other side of the house). When several neighbors talked to them (separately), they realized it was not just one neighbor who was oversensitive and this summer it has been quiet so far.

 

[phyx]

A tip with toddlers is to have some sound already in their room. A Spotify playlist with lullabies/calm songs that plays. If the room is completely silent and children outside make noise, those sounds can be problematic for your children who otherwise have complete silence in the room. Some calm song can dampen the children's noise outside. That's what we do at home when we watch TV. Explosions and stuff in movies can come suddenly. Then calm music works well for our daughter who doesn’t wake up from the noise coming from the TV.

 

[BerraSWE]

I would probably have cut up the trampoline at night when the neighbors are sleeping. Maybe it becomes obvious that you did it but they actually have no proof of it. If they buy a new one, cut that one up too.