'AITA for playing wolf howling sounds to get the neighbour’s baby to stop crying?'
"AITA for playing wolf howling sounds to get the neighbour’s baby to stop crying?"
Throwra_wolfing
I am living next door to neighbours who have a small baby. Their baby regularly cries at night and my life has turned a mess. I invested in white noise machine also but it doesn’t seem to help much.
I even asked the parents to do something about it but they were like that “it’s a baby” and asked me to deal with it. In short they were inconsiderate of my concerns and refused to be of any help. I read somewhere that playing noises of wolves and wild dogs howling can quiet the baby as babies are evolved to protect themselves from predators at night.
So I used my Bluetooth speakers and played that sound. This isn’t terribly loud. For example, have you ever heard the soothing sounds of dolphins during a spa day? That was the main vibe of it. Many people fall asleep to these sounds too.
I do not know if my doing this quiet down the baby but after about 30 odd minutes the baby stops crying. The neighbours have been concerned about this and detected that the noise was coming from my direction and questioned me. I told them the truth and they were annoyed by what I was doing.
It turns out that the baby noise sound only stopped because the parents took their baby to their room, which is not connected to my wall. Turns out the baby room was connected to my bedroom lol. The howling sounds were scaring the baby leading to increased crying and the parents wore worried about the impact of it.
They told me to stop it, I told them I would only do so if they removed the baby from that room as their current arrangement was disrupting me. If it goes against the noise ordinances, I will play the sound during the day nap times. AITA?
Here were the top rated comments from the reader:
BetweenWeebandOtaku
"Am I the ahole for threatening to knowingly terrorize an infant?"
Yes. Yes you are. YTA.
dlRAGERlb
I seriously can’t believe OP even thought there’s any chance they aren’t an AH in this situation. “Babies are evolved to protect themselves from predators”
OP: “Nice. Let me put this baby into fight/flight mode and tap into the worst of their survival instincts!”
Fuzzy-Ad3921
Why tf would you play it during daytime naps when your problem is at nights? You just sound petty. YTA.
FloatingPencil
So they had an option to stop the baby from keeping you awake - moving to another room - and they deliberately chose not to use it, leaving the crying baby in the room with the shared wall? Yeah, NTA. They could have solved the problem the whole time, they just didn’t give a damn.
Stormytude
I know I keep reading all the YTA, and I’m like, clearly the parents have a solution to stop bothering their neighbors and they won’t do it. OP is still an asshole for terrorizing an infant but the parents are choosing to disturb OPs sleep when they can keep the crib in their room and disturb their own. I think ESH is probably what I’d go with.
ErnstBadian
Are you kidding? Bringing the baby into their room to sleep is not a long term solution. They’re entitled to teach their baby to sleep in a developmentally appropriate way, without having to room or bed share until the kid is a lot older.
JupiterSWarrior
The parents are already under a great deal of stress without you adding onto it. YTA.
Edit to add: not to mention that you’re causing a hardship on the rest of your neighbors.
SocksAndPi
ESH. You for terrifying a baby, and probably disturbing your other neighbors. Them for telling you to basically shut up and deal with their screaming baby, instead of moving the baby to their room at night so he/she isn't screaming into your bedroom wall.
Apartments definitely aren't made for families with young children, people with unruly pets, or people who are half-deaf and play their TV/music on full volume. I hate apartments.