One mom went viral for venting about her new downstairs neighbors who, after just a few days after move-in, have filed multiple noise complaints against her family, specifically her toddler daughter. She’s wondering if she is overreacting and asking for advice on how to proceed now that the front office of her apartment complex is also involved.

“We have lived here for four years, and in this four-year span of time, we have never once had a complaint,” Haley Becker prefaces in her now-viral video.

Her new downstairs neighbors — that she described as a “younger couple” — already approached Becker and her husband about how noisy they are, complaining about how they were hearing a lot of “footsteps” — aka her toddler being a toddler.

After some back and forth between her husband and the neighbors, Becker says that the couple just really “weren’t grasping the concept of [them] having a toddler who walks and plays,” saying that her neighbors need to realize, “that’s just the way it is.”

Things came to a head when the downstairs neighbors put in an official complain with the complex’s front office (that was after another time they went up and told Becker’s husband to turn down his music).

Becker explained that she tried to get ahead of the complain and speak to the front office herself, reminding them that she had a toddler-aged kid.

“I just said, ‘Hey, this is what’s going on. We have a toddler. Unless I put her in a straight jacket, I cannot control how often she walks around and how she plays. And I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to prevent my child from exploring and walking around the apartment and living. It’s just not happening.”

She continued, “And I told her on the phone: My daughter wakes up at seven o’clock in the morning. She goes to bed between seven and eight o’clock. She’s not bouncing off the walls at midnight.”

She offered to keep the music down, control their dog, and even make sure their own footsteps weren’t too loud, but she would not compromise on how her daughter chooses to spend her time in her own home.

“I’m not going to plop my daughter in a corner and tell her to be quiet and to walk on her tiptoes and to ‘sh-sh-sh.’ I’m not going to create those habits. And also I’m just not doing it. I don’t feel bad. I just want to make this clear. Like I don’t feel bad for the neighbors. Nothing’s going to change. I want to make that very clear. And I made that very clear to her in the front. We’re not going to be able to change these behaviors and these noises. It’s just impossible. And as parents we’re not doing it,” she explained.

Becker chalks her neighbor’s anger up to the fact that they just don’t know what it’s like to have a child, and they cannot understand why one would make so much noise.

Most of the TikTok users who came across Becker’s neighbor dispute understood where she was coming from.

“Property Manager here. They need to be reminded it’s apartment living. Office should offer another unit, if declined, they should terminate,” one user wrote.

Another said, “It’s called communal noise. They need to buy a house.”

One user echoed, “It’s so unrealistic to ever expect low/no noise in communal living ESPECIALLY when you have upstairs neighbors! Especially with kids!”

Another pointed out that since these people are already so persistent with their complaints, there is likely no solution to this issue except moving out.

In an updated comment, the OP wrote, “✨UPDATE: We just got a notification AGAIN today that they have called to complain 13x in the past 3 days.”

Some users empathized with the downstairs couple.

“Our upstairs neighbor lived here first, their 3-4 y.o. jumps off their furniture from 5:30-10:30pm…. The kid is just being a kid, but it does get old,” one user wrote.

Another said, “Unpopular opinion here. When you rent you don’t get to know who lives above you. Nothing you can do about your kid, but they are now frustrated.”

Apartment living has some downsides, including shared walls. Some small annoyances are bound to happen when multiple sets of people are living in the same building. My friend lived in an old train station that was converted into apartments, and she used to tell me how she could hear her neighbor’s phone alarm and microwave beeps.

Thin walls don’t do much to help drown out comings and goings of neighbors, but that’s kind of the way it is when you choose to live in a place with shared walls.