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If you are a quiet family, how do you handle LOUD friends?


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We had the neighbor girl over this morning. Oh my goodness, this child is like a whirlwind, a LOUD shrieking whirlwind. Within 5 minutes I was getting a splitting headache. We have our excitable moments, but I guess we're pretty quiet overall. She wanted to stay for the afternoon too and I was looking for any excuse to say no! (I did say no and dropped her off at her home at noon). But how do you handle loud friends? I did raise my own voice and told her to 'SETTLE DOWN' when she was in the car because she was flailing around so much that I was afraid that I was going to get into an accident. Honestly, if she were to stay any longer I think I would have slipped tranquilizers into her juice. . . . (and yes, I'm joking - sort of).

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My boys are terribly loud.

 

Just wanted to apologize.

 

My youngest seems to create noise with his pores. Some people sweat, he creates sound waves. I don't know how it happens or how to contain it, but you have my sincere apologies. Older ds flails too... I'm so glad I don't let them out much.

 

 

:lol:

 

How did you become quiet?!?

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Ugh! We're pretty quiet and I HATE loud friends. Indy has one friend who is particularly loud and he drives me crazy. If they're here and playing and friend gets particularly loud I tell him he needs to settle/quiet down or he'll have to go home. If at all possible I send them outside to play.

I know kids are loud and rambunctious (Indy can be), but some kids are just too much to take. I don't know how it is dealt with at their homes, but in ours, being loud just for the sake of being loud is not acceptable.

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We are a quiet family...dh and I are naturally quiet, and DD11 is only child raised in a quiet house. Our dearest friends...their house is like constant bombs going off! She has a boy 11 and a girl 13 (the girl is my dd's best friend). The boy at any random moment will just let out a banshee yell and run through the house! The girl and boy will fight and yell at the top of their lungs like they are dying. My friend the mom doesn't even bat an eye.

 

Honestly, we just enjoy our visit as long as we can. When we get home, without even commenting on it we all retreat to our separate quiet areas to regroup. I don't think there is anything you CAN do... people are who they are!

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How did you become quiet?!?

 

:lol: Probably 90% of it is just genetic. But I think I've raised my kids consciously to be quiet because of my chronic illness. My poor kids have heard "settle down!" for most of their lives. I just don't have the energy to handle loud noises or boisterous activity for very long. My dd9 is my loud energetic child (to me) but I have a feeling that other people might find her quiet;)

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I meet kids at the door and give them the run-down of the rules at my house. Hurting my ears is on the list. ;)

 

(I know! I am old and crochety).

 

Interestingly, I don't really have a whole lot of trouble with the loud, busy kids at my house, once I say a couple times, "What are the rules?" and have them figure out they just broke the big one. I do it in a stern but a bit over-the-top way so that we can both laugh about it. :) I also make sure to catch my kids being loud so that the visiting child isn't singled out.

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This has always been difficult for me, Jean. I like a very quiet house, and my boys learned that at an early age. They get a little loud outdoors, but nothing that would bother the neighbors.

 

All of their friends are entirely different. :willy_nilly:

 

I do my very best to be a nice mom and tell my self repeatedly that it won't last forever. Now that the boys are older and they don't need supervision I tend to go to my room and close the door.

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:lol: Probably 90% of it is just genetic.

 

I'd buy that. My family is quiet. My dad was the quiet one in his family (of 12 kids, the majority of whom are loud), and my mom's entire family is quiet and staid. My sister and I were quiet. Then I married my hubby, who is one of the quiet ones in his family (4 boys, 2 quiet and 2 loud). My DS has sensory issues with noise and tends to be quiet (though he'll go nuts for a while if he sees friends he hasn't seen in a while); DD is naturally loud. When we go to events with my in-laws, DS loses it if it's too loud for too long, and DD thrives in it. Ironically, DS is closest to the loudest uncle and DD is closest to the quiet uncle.

 

Do I think I could handle that much noise? I have. The noise doesn't bug me. It's the throwing and running and mess that usually accompanies the noise that drives me batty.

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We have a basement in this house, they get sent to the basement. In other houses, I suffered in quasi-silence. Once, I got out hearing protection, they got the hint and it was quieter with the "earmuffs" on. They also get sent home earlier than quiet friends, depending on my health and the weather outside and basement availability.

 

My husband's cousin in Japan is always amazed at how quiet the children are there. Her boy is quiet by American standards, but a bit crazy and loud in Japan, evidently. We finally got to see him over Christmas, he is very cute!

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We are a quiet family...dh and I are naturally quiet, and DD11 is only child raised in a quiet house. Our dearest friends...their house is like constant bombs going off! She has a boy 11 and a girl 13 (the girl is my dd's best friend). The boy at any random moment will just let out a banshee yell and run through the house! The girl and boy will fight and yell at the top of their lungs like they are dying. My friend the mom doesn't even bat an eye.

 

Honestly, we just enjoy our visit as long as we can. When we get home, without even commenting on it we all retreat to our separate quiet areas to regroup. I don't think there is anything you CAN do... people are who they are!

 

We're in a similar situation to yours. Quiet homebodies with an introverted only child. We've visited with friends with big, boisterous families and it's fun for a while -- then we need to find a quiet place. When that friend comes to our house, she comments that it's so quiet it kind of drives her crazy. She loves the constant activity and noise of her home.

 

I figure it's good for our quiet ones to get some exposure to that way of living. We joke about homeschoolers stealing our kids' lunches and shoving them into lockers just to give them the experience, but I have found myself trying to make a little noise while the kid is studying. I grew up always studying in complete silence, and trying to study in college was a real adjustment. So maybe we can think of our loud friends as Educational Facilitators. :)

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My boys are terribly loud.

 

Just wanted to apologize.

 

 

We are too. My whole family is loud. My mom had a non-hispanic friend when she was in school and brought her home one day to play at her house and when they walked up to the front door the girl could hear my grandparents inside talking in Spanish. She looked at my mom a little worried and said, "What are they fighting about??" My mom was like, "what?? They're not fighting. They're just talking." Yeah, my family is THAT loud. Sorry if we offend you quiet folks. :grouphug::grouphug: We don't mean to. It's just cultural I guess.

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We are too. My whole family is loud. My mom had a non-hispanic friend when she was in school and brought her home one day to play at her house and when they walked up to the front door the girl could hear my grandparents inside talking in Spanish. She looked at my mom a little worried and said, "What are they fighting about??" My mom was like, "what?? They're not fighting. They're just talking." Yeah, my family is THAT loud. Sorry if we offend you quiet folks. :grouphug::grouphug: We don't mean to. It's just cultural I guess.

 

Some of it might be cultural for me too. I grew up in Japan and things are definitely quieter there.;)

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We're a pretty loud family, too :)

 

My Dh and are talky, talky, talky (with me obviously being more so) and all of my kids - even the baby - are non-stop chatterers. Most of it is simply just the way we are. My DS4 wakes up at full volume, running. He is the noisiest kid I have ever encountered - and I can talk anyone's ear off. It's like it's impossible for him to not make noise at every moment.

 

We try to be as considerate of other people as possible, letting our kids know that different homes have different rules. And we tell them that they need to make sure and let other people talk and that sometimes other people just want quiet and we need to respect that.

 

 

It is a VERY difficult thing to teach naturally loud, active children :lol:

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Some of it might be cultural for me too. I grew up in Japan and things are definitely quieter there.;)

 

I believe it. I always thought of Japan as a quiet and peaceful place. I'd love to go there sometime. :)

 

Not to derail the thread, but I had to share with you a funny that happened to me when I went to Europe. I was in West Germany in a restaurant and I was just talking in my normal speaking voice to my friend across the table from me and I realized that people were looking at me. Then I realized how quietly they were talking. The tables were relatively close to each other and I noticed that I couldn't even hear the conversation of the people sitting on either side of me, so I tried speaking as quietly as I could and I was still too loud. So then I started to whisper and even my whisper was still too loud. I don't know how in the world those people were not only able to speak that quietly, but to have a whole conversation! I was truly amazed! How do people learn to master speaking that softly?? I couldn't do it! :lol:

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I don't know, I have a very loud son and husband, though. With little guy, it could be partly b/c he is on the spectrum. I have tried every think I can think of to teach him what an inside voice sounds like.

 

Maybe I am just too quiet, though. (I have been counted "absent" in more than one class because "Here!" in my biggest, loudest, voice wasn't loud enough.)

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We are too. My whole family is loud. My mom had a non-hispanic friend when she was in school and brought her home one day to play at her house and when they walked up to the front door the girl could hear my grandparents inside talking in Spanish. She looked at my mom a little worried and said, "What are they fighting about??" My mom was like, "what?? They're not fighting. They're just talking." Yeah, my family is THAT loud. Sorry if we offend you quiet folks. :grouphug::grouphug: We don't mean to. It's just cultural I guess.

 

Haha! I remember when my oldest was around 5. We had visited Spain a couple of times before and stayed with my family, but what was shocking to her at that time was how loud people talked in the streets, she thought they were fighting!

 

I know I also speak much louder on the phone when I am talking with somebody from Spain. My dh always reminds me not to shout but I need to talk that loud so I can be heard, lol!

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Not to derail the thread, but I had to share with you a funny that happened to me when I went to Europe. I was in West Germany in a restaurant and I was just talking in my normal speaking voice to my friend across the table from me and I realized that people were looking at me. Then I realized how quietly they were talking.

 

He talks about 'loud American' being an accurate description of cultural vocal volume. He advises doing exactly what you did when overseas: take note of the volume around you and try to match it. Husband is a quiet American, as is his brother, but my S-I-L just has her volume on high.

 

Laura

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Haha! I remember when my oldest was around 5. We had visited Spain a couple of times before and stayed with my family, but what was shocking to her at that time was how loud people talked in the streets, she thought they were fighting!

 

I know I also speak much louder on the phone when I am talking with somebody from Spain. My dh always reminds me not to shout but I need to talk that loud so I can be heard, lol!

 

:lol::lol::lol: I know!! In my family, when we're all together, you probably couldn't even hear a bomb go off outside! hehehehe We can never talk to the person next to us, no way! We ALWAYS have to talk to the person across the table from us so we all have to shout to be heard. We've always been that way. Fortunately though my family live in a Latin neighborhood so everyone is the same way, but I can only imagine if some of the quiet folks ever went to a dinner at my family's house. :eek: :svengo: They'd probably need cotton for their ears. Or maybe some nitroglycerin pills to ward off a heart attack! :tongue_smilie:hehehehehehe :lol:

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He talks about 'loud American' being an accurate description of cultural vocal volume. He advises doing exactly what you did when overseas: take note of the volume around you and try to match it. Husband is a quiet American, as is his brother, but my S-I-L just has her volume on high.

 

Laura

 

hehehehe Glad I did something right even if I was a little too loud in the beginning. :blushing: hehe

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We are a quiet family too. I have had good success with just asking the kids who come over to please quiet down. My standard comment if kids are yelling is "Are you bleeding? What is on fire?" If the answer is no/nothing I ask them to please make sure they aren't so loud again unless they can answer yes. Most kids laugh and get quieter.

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Julie, that was funny! Boys are loud and boisterous. At least mine was. Perhaps, though Jean is right and she raised them this way purposefully because she could otherwise not keep up with all the excitement.

You needn't apologize for your kiddos! :001_smile:

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I should say that I don't think this child (or others like her for that matter) was being naughty or annoying or anything like that. Just loud!

 

Jean, you are right. There is a genetic component. My dh and ds are louder, I am quieter. My ds had friends that were louder than he was and some that were quieter.

My best girl-friend is rather loud! When I know it's her on the phone, I pick up the phone and yell into the receiver from a distance, otherwise my eardrums would burst when she shrieks "Hello". I love her to pieces anyway!

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Sigh. I wish we were a quiet family. I'm not sure how a larger family can be quiet, though. I am always needed by multiple kids at the same time, so they *need* to talk over each other.

 

I crave quiet. I never turn on the radio or TV. It would just add to the noise pollution in our home.

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For those of you with loud kids (like my middle dd):

 

Do you ever have to raise your voice just to get their attention and then have them respond with injury in their eyes & tone, "Why did you yell at me?" :glare:

 

No, sometimes I have to yell multiple times just to get his attention. *shudder*

 

This is the baby who would sit up straight and wail if you walked on a creaky floorboard two rooms away during naptime.

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For those of you with loud kids (like my middle dd):

 

Do you ever have to raise your voice just to get their attention and then have them respond with injury in their eyes & tone, "Why did you yell at me?" :glare:

 

Yes. All the time. But if I speak in a normal tone, I might as well not even exist - they never notice. What's even more disturbing is that as time goes by (maybe since we added baby #6 when the oldest was 8? :D), I need to yell even louder to get their attention. They tune me out. :glare:. And then complain that I yelled at them.

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We are a loud family. Partly due to the kids issues(having one going through a rage storm, with another one loudly goading him and 2 others then looking for attention gets very loud). Ds7 however, does not seem to have a volume switch. Modulating his volume is extremely difficult for him. He is not yelling, he is not screaming, he is just talking but at a very high volume. We have been kicked out of libraries in the city because of it. In the small towns we live/work in the librarians have gotten to know him enough to know he can't help it, though I am constantly working with im and reminding him and know that we will be gone a short while after getting there so they tolerate it.

 

As for flailing etc, well we do that too. We are an animated bunch that talks with our hands when we get excited about something, our volume also starts to rise an octave when we are talking about something we are excited or passionate about, so it may come across as yelling and flailing when really it was simply our eagerness to share something with the other person.

 

I am sure we drive quiet families batty, a quiet day for us is still often too loud for them, but short of packing the children up and shipping them off I do not see our family getting any quieter anytime soon. Even if we weren't dealing with rages, 3 yr old tantrums etc, I can't hear worth beans half the time(though hearing tests came back normal), and ds can't modulate his volume(I was the same as a kid, it took me until my 20s to figure out how to speak with the right volume, I was always either too quiet or too loud, never a normal volume) so that in itself keeps things loud.

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I just don't have the energy to handle loud noises or boisterous activity for very long.

I wish I could teach you how to tune it out. I'm very good at that :p

We are too. My whole family is loud. My mom had a non-hispanic friend when she was in school and brought her home one day to play at her house and when they walked up to the front door the girl could hear my grandparents inside talking in Spanish. She looked at my mom a little worried and said, "What are they fighting about??" My mom was like, "what?? They're not fighting. They're just talking." Yeah, my family is THAT loud.

My parents always had the tv on... LOUD. So, we started off shouting over the tv. Then, we discovered we could cut each other off :lol: After that, it was a snowball effect and now if you want to take part in the family (my family, not so much dh's) conversation you have to be loud and witty. If you aren't funny you lose your audience.

 

Oh, and I'm a Euro mutt, so I'm not sure about cultural differences. I will say, my mother's family is half German and they are some of the loudest ones (it surprised me to read what happened to you there).

<snip of a really funny story> How do people learn to master speaking that softly?? I couldn't do it!

I have a low voice, bt I get used to straining it to be heard. I've btdt, but thankfully I can lower my voice. I think most of it is tone (not volume). My dad and dh's voices can both be heard rooms away, because their voices are so deep. At the same time, they're easy to ignore, because the tone is so low. It's like listening to a suped up car blasting base as it drives by. It can catch your attention, but often you can ignore it and go on as you were ;)

Maybe I am just too quiet, though. (I have been counted "absent" in more than one class because "Here!" in my biggest, loudest, voice wasn't loud enough.)

Me too. It's so funny, because we (as a group) are worse than a herd of elephants, but if you isolate us from one another we tend to disappear.

I know!! In my family, when we're all together, you probably couldn't even hear a bomb go off outside! <snip>I can only imagine if some of the quiet folks ever went to a dinner at my family's house...

My brother's first wife HATED coming to visit us. I felt horribly for her. We gave her headaches :( We'd always start off well, polite, quiet, courteous, but as the seconds passed... we'd go back to normal.

Julie, that was funny! Boys are loud and boisterous. At least mine was. Perhaps, though Jean is right and she raised them this way purposefully because she could otherwise not keep up with all the excitement.

You needn't apologize for your kiddos! :001_smile:

Thank you :D I feel for the people who can't block them out. They can be a bit much. They're not the worst, but they could do with some lessons in quiet. We've been trying to learn how to step lightly (along with not flailing while running). So far, they've stopped rattling the windows when they pay careful attention :lol:

Do you ever have to raise your voice just to get their attention and then have them respond with injury in their eyes & tone, "Why did you yell at me?" :glare:

Oh my goodness, every single time!

 

In their defense, I did the same to my parents.

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I've felt your pain.

 

We've entertained those loud friends in quiet places or outdoors. Meet at the library, the mall or a park, and set a specific amount of time for each get together.

 

I'm a little ashamed to admit this, but I was happy when my loud neighbors moved two years ago. They were really nice too, but loud by nature.

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We are also Loud People. Well, DH (and his family of origin) are all quiet, but I come from a family of enthusiastic talkers (not to mention gesticulators) and am apparently raising my children to be the same. They start at 6am and don't stop until they go to bed, and despite my herculean efforts, their volume switches remain turned to LOUD. Even my 6mo babbles nonstop.

 

DH was just reminding me yesterday how before we had children I confidently assured him that our children would not be noisy, since they would be properly parented. :D

 

We are friends with one family in which the daughter is very quiet; the mom is not, but I think my boys are a bit much for the little girl, so we tend to meet at a playground.

 

I will say that I find the quiet at my ILs' a bit eerie. Especially at dinnertime, I feel a sort of obligation to fill up the silence. Well, obviously there is no silence any more since the children are generally there, too, but before the kids I was constantly launching conversational gambits only to have them ....fade into the quiet.

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I should say that I don't think this child (or others like her for that matter) was being naughty or annoying or anything like that. Just loud!

 

 

Gosh, I don't know why my dd was at your house but I'll tell her to quiet down. :D

 

I think we would be considered loud and "busy." Both dc are constantly moving.

 

When dd was a baby, we were never quiet when she slept so that she would not be a light sleeper. Well we over did it, I think. That girl would sleep through a tornado. It is scary how much volume it takes to wake her. I think that once you are used to a certain volume level, your scale become skewed, kwim? I never realized how loud and insane our house is until I met quiet people.

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My parents always had the tv on... LOUD. So, we started off shouting over the tv. Then, we discovered we could cut each other off :lol: After that, it was a snowball effect and now if you want to take part in the family (my family, not so much dh's) conversation you have to be loud and witty. If you aren't funny you lose your audience.

Yep. I can relate to this. :) In my family, we're all story tellers. You don't ask us, "What did you do today?" and get a simple "Oh I went to the bank and then the grocery store" answer in return, no, we have to tell you every crazy little thing that happened on the way to the bank, at the bank, in the grocery store etc. The crazier the story the better. If we leave everyone laughing so hard that they cannot breathe, we've done our job. :D hehehe

 

Oh, and I'm a Euro mutt, so I'm not sure about cultural differences. I will say, my mother's family is half German and they are some of the loudest ones (it surprised me to read what happened to you there).

I was in Stuttgart when I was in the quiet restaurant. I went in September of 1995. For the record, when I went to East Germany I couldn't believe how loud they were after coming from the West. They were hilarious. They reminded me of Latinos. :)

 

 

My brother's first wife HATED coming to visit us. I felt horribly for her. We gave her headaches :( We'd always start off well, polite, quiet, courteous, but as the seconds passed... we'd go back to normal.

Sadly, I'm sure I've unwittingly made many people feel that way. :( It's hard to modulate your volume. You're so used to being a certain way your whole life you do things without realizing you're doing them.

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I have no idea. We can be pretty quiet here too (mainly due to everyone having their head in their computer screen) but dh has this habit of slamming doors. He doesn't think its slamming but it makes my nerves jump 2 or 3 rooms away. I just ask him to please try and close the doors quietly.

 

I think small doses is the best answer :)

But sometimes people come into your life to shake you up a bit and its good to make some space for that, too :) (I try and make space for dh and his slamming doors. I try. And then I just have to say something. )

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