At about 9:45 on Shabbos morning, my ds5 went out of the building to do an errand for me, and when he returned a few minutes later, he was very upset. He said (and my daughters confirmed since they could hear from all the way up here) that the downstairs neighbor yelled at him – in English – to stop running around and making noise in our apartment.
When he told me this, I didn’t say a word. On Shabbos mornings, I like to sleep in late, but because I have young children, I don’t actually sleep. What I do is stay in bed, and since I don’t want them running around unsupervised, they join me and we read and play together there. From the time they woke up at 7 am until 9 or 9:30, this is where they were, and it wasn’t until then that I allowed them to run around and play with each other (in their bare feet, because shoes would make more noise). I’ve tried to accomodate this neighbor and reduce our noise in a number of ways, but once my child was verbally accosted, a line had been crossed that was unacceptable to me.
So I got up, got dressed, and still without saying a word, left our home. But my desire to be prudent prevailed and I decided to get advice from a neighbor who was here for many years before speaking to the difficult neighbor. I then learned that this neighbor has told others that they’re hoping to make us so miserable that we’ll move away, and also complained that it’s not bad enough that we have children, but that we even have guests over (the person who was told this was shocked they weren’t embarrassed to say these things out loud). After speaking to her, my initial anger was over, but my desire to take care of this issue wasn’t.
I’ve said before regarding discussions about homeschooling that I won’t have conversations in which I’m put on the defensive, and that means sometimes turning things around and putting others on the defense instead. There’s probably a martial arts term for this. 🙂 And this is what I felt needed to be done now, because he was viewing our niceness and efforts to be accommodating as weakness and I was certain he would continue to escalate unless we showed him we wouldn’t tolerate any more.
So I went to his apartment, and pounded on his door as hard as I could. This was to let him know someone who was very serious about something was going to be on the other side. As soon as he opened it, he started yelling at me for banging on his door, but he didn’t have much of a chance to talk, since I started yelling over him: “How dare you yell at my son! If you have a problem, you come to me. Don’t start up with my children, and don’t start up with me!”
He told me how loud my eleven children are, starting from 5 am in the morning, and I shouted at him that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that we don’t have eleven children, they certainly don’t wake up at 5 am, and most of my children are older and aren’t making noise that would disturb him at all – so he’s clearly saying things that don’t make any sense.
He got a little embarrassed here, and said, well, how many children do you have? I told him it’s irrelevant, and his complaints about us are ridiculous, and even the police he sent to our house could see it was absurd. He told me how we should go buy a private house and live there, that we could have bought a house for the price we paid for our apartment (as if!), and I told him I’d be happy to buy a house and move there as soon as he gave us two million shekels to do so. And until then we’re staying put and have no plans to go anywhere. I told him if he doesn’t like living in a building with other people, then he can sell his apartment and buy himself a house if he thinks that’s so simple, but otherwise he’s going to have to accept things as they are.
Then he told me if our kids want to play, they can play outside at a public park, not in the house. I told him our children are entitled to play in their own home, and they’ll continue to do so. I said I was sure when his son was young that he didn’t forbid him from doing anything but walking quietly across a room.
As we continued to talk, he started to back down, and told me that he didn’t really yell at my son, and when I said he did, he said that he doesn’t feel well and so he sometimes he gets upset. I told him I don’t care how upset he is, maybe he needs to take aspirin or vitamins but there’s no excuse to yell at a little child not even doing anything wrong. So he apologized for yelling at him.
As the conversation continued, he became more reasonable, and then it was finally possible to talk to him. He told me someone in the past replaced the tiles on the floor of my apartment, and didn’t put in any sound proofing. I told him I understood why that would be a problem, but this was the first I was hearing of it, and I couldn’t afford to retile the majority of our living space to change this. But at the end of the conversation, I said that if he was willing to pay for half of the cost, I would pay the other half. He told me it was my apartment and he wasn’t going to pay a penny, so I shrugged and said it didn’t make a difference to me, that I don’t have extra money to throw around and would rather not have to spend any money on this, but was making the offer as a concrete indication of our willingness to find a solution.
He told me to try to be more understanding, and I told him that I couldn’t be any more understanding than I had already been, and that there was nothing more I could do. I wanted to be sure when we finished the conversation that he was clear about this. So we parted, not exactly amiably, but at least I had a good feeling that some things had been straightened out.
A friend, learning about this later in the day, said she couldn’t imagine me yelling at someone. The things we do for our kids. 😛 Really, a big part of why I felt this had to be done so my kids would know that I wouldn’t let people hurt them if it were in my power.
Although I was yelling and looked and sounded upset, I was watching myself the entire time, almost from a distance. I felt almost like I was in a play, and was doing a good job playing my part convincingly. When I first left my home, I was planning to speak to him in English and let him puzzle out what I was saying, because when I feel pressured, I tend to forget some Hebrew vocabulary, and I didn’t want to be at a language disadvantage. But since I wasn’t angry by the time I spoke to him, it was no problem to yell at him in Hebrew. 🙂
I’m not naive enough to think this will end the situation with him – he has a long history of being a difficult neighbor. But my kids can feel safe walking into our building now and that’s a big thing, and hopefully this conversation will help him to rethink attacking us next time he’s feeling upset about something.
Avivah
Avivah,
It sounds like you dealt with this as well as it is possible to. Sounds like your neighbor is a bully, and being accommodating was not going to get results.
And good for you for not telling him how many kids you have. I always get too flustered and respond to questions that take me away from the key issue.
And I am sure your children feel very protected by you, especially since this is not the norm for you.
Yasher Koach!
Nechama
Definitely a bully, and bullies operate by different emotional rules than regular people – he who can intimidate the other more wins.
My kids definitely appreciated this – I found out when I got upstairs that they heard me yelling and opened the door, and were all standing there listening next to the crack. Not suprising they could hear me; I’m sure most of the neighbors stopped talking inside their respective apartments to listen to this whole thing unfold. It was very, very loud. 🙂
Wow, shkoyach! You’re becoming a real Israeli. 😀 Lol, we had a neighbor similar to that, but I think you’re handling it better than we handled it. So funny about the “acting out the part”. I was cracking up as I read this, because I couldn’t imagine it. But yea, in Israel you sometimes need to show that you’re the strong one to make sure people don’t take advantage of you. Being accommodating doesn’t really get you anywhere here, other than being walked all over.
That’s what my Israeli neighbor congratulated me on tonight when she heard about it, handling it like a real Israeli. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. 🙂
Seriously, there are cultural norms that mean things are interpreted differently from country to country. I can’t even imagine yelling at anyone in the US, no matter how upset I was. But here stronger tones don’t mean the same thing, and to speak the way I did in the US also means something different – but here it’s not positive, whereas in the US it was. To me, this interaction was highly aggressive, and while I think it’s important to advocate for yourself, I prefer assertiveness and am very, very uncomfortable with aggression. But it’s lots easier to do here, because it’s more expected.
Gosh, just to get the bank to agree to reissue my checks with the proper address and phone number (they listed my US city and state, and the phone number of a friend in RBS!) without charging me for more checks required a high level of advocacy. I don’t like being pushy, but it helps me to realize that what I think of as pushy isn’t seen that way here. I wish I could politely state the issue, have someone take responsibility for their part, and have it resolved, but if that’s not happening, you have to find a way to resolve things to your satisfaction. It’s not good to feel like you’re being walked over because you don’t understand cultural expectations.
Yea, exactly. There’s just a different way of doing things. This is kind of what I and others were discussing on imamother, how when you’re in Israel, you need to be more aggressive to get things done, because people mistaken politeness being “being a friar”, being able to be pushed around. By showing him that you’re not willing to be pushed around, and are willing to stand up for yourself, I bet you’ve earned his respect in a convoluted way. The problem with doing things like this is to make sure that it doesn’t become a part of your nature (as an adult, this is easier than as a kid), but rather is done, measured, as necessary.
BRAVO!!!!! 🙂
Thanks!
You go girl! I remember the day I ‘snapped’ and decided that I was not going to worry about being nice to strangers anymore. We were hiking in a park, and my kid kicked over a pile of rocks. A fellow who was way off the trail stomping around where he shouldn’t have been (so he could take a picture of the nature he was stomping on!) started cussing out my then four year old. For kicking over a random pile of rocks! At first I took my kids and left, but as I walked on, I realized that his behaviour was totally unacceptable to me. So I turned around and ran down the trail after him. He saw me coming and when he realized I was there to stand up to him, he took off running! I yelled some not so nice things at him as he tried to get away from the crazy lady. Unlike like you, I was operating in absolute fury – I probably would have punched the guy if I could have caught him. Since then, I have never let anybody behave in a way that I felt was inappropriate with my kids. And just to clarify, I have no problem with others disciplining my children if they deserve it (in fact, sometimes I beg other people to discipline my kids so they don’t think I’m the only person who cares about the things they do). But I will not let anybody speak harshly just because they’re having a bad day.
You know, years ago there was one time that sticks out in my memory that i should have screamed at someone when they did something to one of my kids, and my ‘niceness’ factor overrode my instinctive response. And I still regret that, even though the child at the time was too young to be aware of what happened.
If a mom won’t stick up for her kids when they need it, who will? I think what you did was great.
You are awesome, I think this is a great example of how sometimes the right & wise thing to do is to get into someone’s face, so to speak, in a controlled but FIRM tone as you did. Good job Avivah!
LOL, Kelly, I was literally in his face. I shook my finger about three inches from his nose when I warned him to leave my kids alone, and when he told me to get my hand out of his face, I refused and kept yelling while shaking my finger even more in his face!
Kol ha kavod! I still haven’t gained the confidence necessary to take a stand like you did and we have been here a year and a half. I can see how this confrontation was necessary and I hope you see only positive repercussions from it.
I also hope that it will only be positive. As funny as it might sound, I’m not angry at him. I feel like this cleared the air and I can see him as an unfortunate person, instead of feeling victimized by him.
So far, it was already mentally helpful! Tonight I hosted a women’s gathering in my home for a bit under 20 women, and before this, I would have felt anxious the entire time that he was going to come raging up and start yelling about the noise, but I was able to feel totally relaxed, knowing I could handle it if he did, but also knowing how unlikely it was that he’d try anything so soon after this confrontation.
Great! 🙂 It is much healthier not to be stressed out. I am stressed about upsetting our downstairs neighbor and I haven’t even seen the person…but I am such a worrier. Much healthier not to be!
Wow I just found this blog and this post helped me a lot(in chizuk). A have huge problems with my neighboor dowstair bc of the same thing. He says my kids make noise and run all day(even that they r out of the house from 8am-4pm). He turns music very loud to bother me(he leaves the house when he does that), he said that with no shame. We r looking to move(not only bc of him but his existence helped us in this decision) but reading what u wrote give me strength to deal with him until we find a new place.
I’m glad something I wrote was encouraging, Esther, and am so sorry you have such a difficult neighbor. Can you call the police with a complaint about the noise next time he blares the music? Kind of like turning the tables on him? Or maybe act like you’re oblivious to him trying to get under your skin? Or enlist a sabra to yell at him for you? 🙂
I really believe when we’re faced with difficult situations, that Hashem (G-d) sends them to us to help us work on an area that we need to improve in, and that if we don’t work on that area, we’ll be sent similar challenges via different people until we learn what we’re meant to learn. I really feel there’s a reason I have to have this particular neighbor, that there’s some way I can grow from it, and knowing this has helped me have a good perspective about this situation. I’m not sure what I’m meant to learn – at first I thought it was to be kind to him and not get angry at him, but now I think maybe I’m meant to create strong boundaries and learn that just because someone complains about me doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me, and to thicken my emotional armor.
I wish you lots of strength in dealing with your neighbor!