I think it's common courtesy and respect to lower your volume level when anyone is sleeping, regardless of age. Most kids will sleep through background noise, but sudden loud noises will usually wake anyone. An adult could probably just fall back to sleep, but babies and kids don't rebound from startle quite so easily.
I was surprised that my youngest slept through the festivities at my parents house on Christmas day because their house is long and thin so there is no room "out of the way" for her to sleep in. All the rooms are right off the corridor that people go back and forth down. Even my other two kids were going up and down it with rolling toys (on a tile floor *sigh*). I didn't warn everyone she was sleeping though and I think my family would have made an effort to be quieter if I had asked
DD will sleep through most noise (having an older brother will do that for you), but doors slamming wake her everytime. Our Toilet is next to her room and on Christmas Day I stuck a sticky note on the toilet day that simply said "Please close this door softly while A is sleeping". FIL just let is slam while I was in her room resettling her, then MIL commented that she didn't sleep for long - Grrrrr
I don't expect total silence either, but a bit of courtesy not to deliberately be loud wouldn't go astray.....
I agree with the previous posters that say basic common courtesy of not making loud, sudden noises when kids are asleep is an acceptable thing to ask for. When I am at home and people are over when DD is settling off to sleep I will ask that they be a bit quiet (as I do) whilst they are settling, but once she is asleep she generally stays that way unless there is a very loud noise (or she's finished her sleep).
I think excessive and unnecessary noise isn't cool, but general noise/talking etc is fine IMO. If *your* child/ren can't sleep in that situation then that's not my or my kids' problem I'm afraid. Of course if I was in your house then that's different, I'd be courteous and make sure that the noise was kept down, but in a shared space or my own home, then get over yourself. Last Christmas SIL and her family (DH and 15mo son) were staying at the IL's place and we went over there for Christmas lunch as we always do, except because her DS *had* to have a sleep right on the time that we normally do presents, we all had to keep the noise to a whisper which was just bull**** IMO. He was asleep at the complete opposite end of a HUGE house and the noise doesn't carry in that house - I know because I've had my kids there as newborns/babies/toddlers and all 4 of them have been able to sleep through normal noise without a problem. So had we known that the sleep nazi was going to be there (ie her DH who is a effing tool) we would have gotten there 2 hours later. Can you even imagine how hard it was to keep 4 kids on CHristmas day absolutely silent for 2 hours? If her DH had of told them to keep quiet one more time I would have told him to **** off and wake up to himself. They weren't making excessive noise - they were excited, but not overly noisy or too loud and it was completely unfair to them to expect them to be silent. Mind you, SIL and her DH are nutjobs when it comes to their kids' sleep (they now have two kids). She spent Christmas with her IL's this year and she had to be home at 1pm so her two could have a sleep and because lunch wasn't ready she just packed up and went home without even having Christmas lunch. She is the type who freaks right out about sleep and if they don't go to sleep on the absolute dot of their sleep time then she has a meltdown to rival a 2 year old. So this has made it virtually impossible for her to go anywhere with them. THe kids are fine, it's just something that is entirely in her head. Me on the other hand, well when our first baby was only young we went to our local pub (in a tiny population of 100 village) because they had a band on and he slept through all of it out in the publican's residence that was next to the room where the band was and we didn't hear peep out of him.
So for me, what it comes down to is yes, I will respect that there is a child asleep and make sure the kids or I don't make too much noise, but on the other hand, the parents do have to be realistic that they do not have the right to be precious about it and make people feel like they have committed murder just because your child can't sleep through moderate noise.
ETA - I do understand what you mean about people not respecting kids in general and that they wouldn't do it to adults, but I don't think that's always the case. I think if you are in a party type situation where there are people there having a good time, then it is going to be near impossible to expect them to keep the noise to a dull roar all of the time. If they were deliberately being an ass about it and making really loud noise, then that's different, but normal noise of a party etc should be OK and I don't think that is disrespectful.
Last edited by Trillian; December 28th, 2012 at 11:39 AM.
The only thing I want to add to this discussion is to point out that there's a percentage of people out there walking around with undiagnosed sleep disorders - either with difficulty getting to or staying asleep. Often for these people, the quality of sleep when they are asleep is very poor as well. This kind of ongoing sleep deprivation is a nightmare. So, while I've always expected my kids to cope with the low hum of general living noise, when I've been around other people with sleep difficulties I have been very, very careful to respect their need for quiet, even when it's meant limiting my own night-owl activities.
ETA - On the other hand, those who supposedly need "silence" to the point that it's impacting whole groups of people in the shared space should, IMO, be using some white noise techniques, by way of compromise. That way everyone's needs can be accommodated.
Last edited by AnyDream; December 28th, 2012 at 12:52 PM.
I have one very good sleeper who could sleep through an earthquake and another very bad sleeper. I'll tell my bad sleeper stories as they're more entertaining. DD2 has always been a bad sleeper. I knew this from when she was a few weeks old and I wandered soundlessly past her cot. My shadow woke her up. I gave up trying to give her a day sleep at a few months old. When she was about a year old, she could be asleep for 10 minutes and wake up if my tummy rumbled next to her cot. At 18 months, again, looked like she was sound asleep for a good length of time, would hear a dog barking a few blocks awake, sit bolt upright and say "wuff".
If I tried to accommodate her when she was a baby, I would have to stop my tummy rumbling and debark every dog in the neighbourhood.
I also have DP who is a shiftworker who often needs to sleep during the day. No loading the dishwasher, no vacuuming, no tantruming children. Nightmare scenario.
I think some children just can't sleep through noise and can't 'learn' to but I also think that if that's the case, you can't expect everyone else to change their behaviour around them. Life goes on.
If any of my kids needed quiet to sleep.........well they wouldn't sleep lol my babies can sleep through any noise and I have never tippy toed and forced others, even in my own house, to subscribe to an impossible version of quiet. It just can't be done unless your alone. I think even in restless or light sleepers that's just compounding the problem.
I think my dh is a good case of sleep training working. He wasn't the deepest sleeper before he joined the military but after 12 years of learning to sleep through noise (from general noise to being rocketed) the man sleeps like the dead! Almost to the point of ridiculousness, the kids can be squealing right next to his head and he is still snoring away. One of our kids inherited that outright, one is a deep sleeper when he is asleep and one is a light sleeper but he has learnt to manage.
But I'd agree that people do pay off kids as not important for consideration in a lot of things sure. And that's not cool.
This is the issue I had with my ILs over christmas. My SIL & BILs kids were running up and down the passage blowing those party blower things that unroll the paper when you blow on them right outside the room where DD2 was just drifting off. Then when I said - hey she is trying to go to sleep maybe keep it down I was looked at like being unreasonable. Of course BIL and SIL don't tell their kids to maybe keep it down a bit or maybe go to another part of the very large house, so I go cool, I'll just move DD2 and her cot to the other end of the house so the kids can keep blowing their irritating blowers AND she can get to sleep. Then when she is asleep I get the condescending 'she's a bit sensitive to sound is she?' questions. Umm running and squealing and blowing blowers 3 feet from her constitutes 'sensitive to sound' does it....right! Then the rest of her sleep BIL, SIL, MIL and FIL are like 'oh no we can't go anywhere near that end of the house DD2 is sleeping' laying THAT tone on really thick. DH and I are like nah it's fine, get stuff out of the next room, get stuff out of the room she is in - we do often, but just don't yell while doing it. But still with THAT tone and still with the condescending comments.
So like most other posters I don't require silence and wouldn't expect others to create silence when ever my girls are sleeping, but I expect the squealing and blowing to be toned down or moved away.
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