Woman lashes out at neighbor; 'How DARE you criticize my parenting.' AITA? UPDATED

"AITA for telling my neighbor to mind her business?"

Hello everyone! So I recently made a Reddit account just to scroll when I'm bored. I'm new here so I really have no idea how this all works lol!

For some background, me (27f) and my husband (28m) have lived in our apartment for about 6 years now. Our neighbors (let's call them Mary and Mark, somewhere in their 40s) suck, but we deal with it because we don't want to deal with drama. They've lived here for about 15 years and act like they own the house.

Yesterday morning my autistic toddler (3f) was having a meltdown at 4 am. I understand this is super early... but there's not really much I could do. When she is having a meltdown, she kicks, screams, slaps, throws herself into the walls/floor/radiators, etc...

my approach is to let it happen in her bedroom where it is safe for her. We have her bedroom completely safety proofed specifically so she can't hurt herself when she throws herself around. I go in every 3-4 minutes to ask if she's ready to come out. This was taught to me by her OT.

Mary messaged me and said, "not sure if you can hear your baby crying for you." To say I was pissed is an understatement. My daughter is 3. Any 3 year old, autistic or not, cries! I responded saying, "yes, I'm aware, thanks. I feel like this message was unnecessary.

She is having a meltdown and doesn't like to be touched, so I walked away for a few minutes, not that it is any of your business. Thank you."

She did not like this. A few minutes later I get a message back saying, "I didn't mean anything by it. I was woken up as usual (mind you I never say anything). I never judged you as a parent and never will. She screamed for a while.

I didn't think you'd take it personally. I've never told you anything about the kids screaming bouncing off whatever it is... at 4 in the morning. I simply thought you didn't hear her. Yeah I'll mind my business for sure! That's so immature of you taking it personally especially from me! I've never said anything wrong about your kids!"

I decided to take this opportunity to let Mary know about herself. I responded with, "I've never said anything about you guys being loud as hell all night keeping my kids up or anything about the dog shit you leave all over the yard/walkway either!

You guys are insanely inconsiderate of us and I'm just sick of it. You can bet I'll be contacting [landlord] about these things more often! I tried to be nice. I'm not anymore and I'm not sorry. If you need to contact me for anything you can go through [landlord]. Thanks." And then I pressed the block button.

Ever since then, they've been blaring music as loud as they can all day and into the night, stomping around, screaming, just being jerks lol.

It's just difficult to see if I'm in the right or wrong. I grew up being told I'm the problem, everything is my fault. I've been in therapy for a few years now and I'm still working on not blaming myself for everything. Am I the asshole in this situation?

Before we give you OP's update, let's take a look at some top responses:

vantage writes:

ESH. Look, I get that you can’t necessarily quiet down your screaming toddler, but at 4am, you owe it to your neighbors to at least move her as far away from their bedroom as possible. And even more than this—you actually do need to communicate with your neighbors.

If they are being too loud during what should be quiet hours, let them know, kindly. Don’t let it build up until you explode at 4am. And if they are leaving dog poop anywhere, you definitely call them out on it right away.

You both have legitimate complaints to the landlord though. I have a severely autistic relative so I understand you can’t necessarily control her behavior, but you do need to realize it’s impacting your neighbors to hear the screaming and thumping going on during one of these fits.

I’m actually surprised they didn’t call the police, thinking you were abusing the child. At least now they know. I suggest you both sit down, apologize to each other for the 4am unpleasantries, and offer to communicate better and to in general be more considerate.

Put yourself in their shoes—maybe you can just filter out the screams and crashes as you are used to it, but they are not. They are just trying to get some sleep.

vision34 writes:

NTA. Did she think you slept through your toddler's tantrum or what? But I do think you shouldn't have escalated. I understand why you did though, toddler tantrums are super stressful (mine isn't even autistic and they're awful) without a neighbour being passive-aggressive.

It's just much easier to be civil and get along with AH neighbours than it is to fight with them. My neighbours aren't the best (they've tried to cut down the trees in my garden without permission and screamed to everyone when I wouldn't let them and moved a wall in their house when i had a newborn) but it's so much easier to be on friendly terms.

Toddlers waking up at 4am or 5am isn't even that unusual. I guess if they're childfree, they wouldn't get it, but it's a lot worse for the parents than it is for the neighbours! I hope you can move soon.

butnaog writes:

YTA, her text wasn’t rude. You were incredibly rude. One time or not, you hear a child having a meltdown at 4am and can’t hear or see an adult being involved it’s a good idea to make sure someone knows they are awake and unhappy. For all she knew you were asleep/had headphones on and were doing something or whatever.

fouta writes:

Soft YTA. Sorry but that text seems like your neighbor trying to GENTLY as you to keep your kid quiet at an UNGODLY hour. Most lease agreements have a “covenant of quiet enjoyment” and you can potentially be evicted if this is a pattern - the landlord has to make “reasonable” accommodation for disability but that has its limits also.

Being woken up at 4 AM is NOT equivalent to dog poop on the walkway or even being loud at 10 PM. This fight is not worth the potential consequences for you, it seems you have more to lose than them.

feeeety writes:

ESH. i understand you have a toddler with asd. that's not an excuse to be inconsiderate to others. i understand you've been given strategies by your OT. these strategies should not be implemented when your toddler is waking up the whole neighbourhood at 4am.

l and then, when you received a very civil message from your neighbour, instead of apologising for your toddler, you were an even bigger dick about it. your neighbour then escalating it makes her a dick as well, but i can't say it's not justified. you sound insufferable.

And now, OP's update:

This probably won't change anything for those of you saying I'm the asshole, I get that. But I'll add it just in case.

My neighbors regularly blare music and are really loud until about 3 am. I have mentioned this a few times, and they've ignored me. I also talked to my landlord about it and he said he would talk to them but I don't know what happened from there.

Mark is an extremely aggressive drunk and will not hesitate to get up in mine or my husband's face. I try to avoid all confrontation with these people because I don't want to deal with that. I probably should have added that lol.

They are aware that I have 2 autistic children, Mary actually told me to never apologize for the noise because she understands as she used to work with special needs kids.

I used to speak to her in passing pretty regularly until I brought up another issue, which was our bushes. Mark gets paid to cut them by our landlord, but he refuses to, which causes safety issues because we can't see while pulling out of our driveway.

I brought it up because I almost got hit one morning with the kids in the car. Her response was to tell me she didn't care because she can't see either. His was to tell me to sit on a stack of books lol.

She stopped being nice after that. I understand why I'm the asshole here. I absolutely overreacted and responded in a way that was unnecessary. I should have handled this better.