Photo credit: Alexander Dummer from Pexels
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
The Quiet Coalition’s Arline Bronzaft, PhD, recently wrote about a website in Japan that allows people to report noisy locations, including noisy children. Dr. Bronzaft has a lot of experience with noise complaints, having served five New York City mayors and on the GrowNYC board as the pointperson dealing with noise issues.
This article by Katherine Martinko on Treehugger tells us that it’s okay for playing children to be noisy.
I agree. I always liked the sound of children playing, especially when they are outside, during the daytime hours.
As Martinko writes, many of her older neighbors in a small Ontario town find the sound of children playing to be music to their ears. The difference between her experience, and that of urban dwellers in Japan or New York City apartments, may be the proximity of the noise source and the hours during which the noise occurs.
That said, a neighbor’s children banging their blocks on the floor in the apartment above mine probably wouldn’t be music to my ears or anyone else’s ears.
