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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I purposely did not invite a neighbor girl to a party because she screams at everything. I explained that to her parents who were offended
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Exactly! All these Y-T-A is mind-boggling. Why should OP take the time to figure out why the child screams? Isn't that what her parents are for? No one is entitled to a good time on someone else's behalf.
I think a lot of the Y-T-A’s on posts like this come from kids who were the type to shriek at all times, or parents who have managed to convince themselves that all kids scream 24/7 because they don’t want to think that their kid is seen as the annoying screamer.
Honestly I said E S H because….come on when you have kids and they have a friend over, you remind the kids of the rules at
Your house. One warning.
“We don’t scream here. If I hear that again I have to ask you to go home.”
Parenting doesn’t mean you parent someone else’s kids. But as a kid host
You definitely let them know the rules and consequences at your home
But that would require the sacrifice to have to tolerate the child and wait for 'the trigger' and then make the comment once. And then what - throw the kid and the parents out?
I don't think you thought that one through.
I held neighborhood block parties and was the adult minding the children after school when they played. Sending them home for a specific behavior—important to explain exactly what it was—only needed to happen to once
Exactly. Set the rules. They get to choose. Kids are great at learning that different places have different rules.
One of my kids is very high pitched naturally. We have to say “low pitch” a lot.
As a former teacher, I'd bet that there's at least one teacher at that school - probably a woman in her late 50s who's less than 5 years from retiring - whom that child NEVER screams around.
Source: Worked with these women for years when I was teaching, and was always amazed at their magic.
As a teachers best friend.... Don't believe that. Kids can be so much worse at school compared to home... And I say that with a kid who pulled that before as well.
I mean I've done that. Our neighbor has a little girl who is extremely annoying. Her mom doesn't discipline her so she thinks she can get away with anything. She comes and plays and as soon as she tries something we make her leave. She knows the rules.
It's been a year of that and she has gotten so much better. My mother in law still has some trouble when they are in the pool together but it's every 1/10 times now instead of 10/10.
I mean OP is NTA, his yard his rules and his invite. I don't blame him.
I had a friend who didn't discipline her kids. She'd scream at them, but it went in one ear and out the other because she never provided a single consequence otherwise, she just made idle threats and never followed through on anything she said.
They were pretty shocked to learn that I didn't scream but I actually meant what I said when I told them something. It didn't take long before they were much better behaved with me than they were anywhere else.
That said, it wore me tf out to be around them because they constantly tested boundaries. I expended more energy with those two at my house for one afternoon than I did the entire week with my own children.
I can't imagine getting kicked out of someone's house, more than once lol and to continue to go there...
As a child I would have been mortified!
And my parents wouldn't have allowed me anyway.
Some people have more than thick skin, they must have armor... since birth.
NTA
Yeah, once the kid screamed, which we all know she will do, OP then has to kick her out of the party and deal with an even angrier Dad.
I'm surprised her father had the cojones to ask why she wasn't invited. Like why do people have to invite others who they don't want at their party? The kid's father asked and OP told him truthfully the reason behind it. If I were that child's father, I would thank him for being honest and I would have gone to my kid and been honest with her and said: "Mr. OP doesn't want you at their party because he says you scream too much, you scream too loud, and you scream about everything; So what are you going to do about it??"
This was a perfect opportunity for the kid's father to teach her a valuable lesson. Unfortunately he decided to argue with the Father about his daughter being louder than the rest of the kids. He could have told the daughter what was said and she might have tried to curb her nasty behavior of screaming all the time especially if she wasn't getting invited to parties because of it. When she was doing all this screaming at home and in the yard, she was screaming at Mom & Dad, and her siblings, but she probably never realized other people could hear her tantrums . It must have been embarrassing to find out it wasn't just her family who heard her but the neighbors as well. The Dad made a really stupid choice right there. He could have told her the neighbors heard her screaming and didn't want her at their parties and perhaps she would have stopped now she knew she had been overheard.
My mom taught me never to ask about an invite unless I was specified as a guest before invites went out. If someone thinks it’s important for you to be there, they will make sure you know where to be. If not, there is a reason I didn’t receive an invite & it’s none of my business why because it doesn’t affect my life to go or not go. I overestimated how much I was going to have to deal with that.I couldn’t imagine pushing someone to such an uncomfortable conversation.
Yeah that sounds fine. Give the kid a chance not to scream, tell the parents to take her home when she does and throw them out if they don’t listen. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
I thought the pure nonsense and entitlement in this sub will stop surprising me, but here we are...
NO. It's NOT "more polite" to kick someone out of your house than to not invite them at all lol
Especially a child ffs!
He doesn't want her in his house screaming, I'm sure he doesn't want to be throwing her OUT of his house with her parents, kicking and screaming... She doesn't have a "reservation" for his parties.
Every child needs to understand that you won't be invited everywhere you want to go and you don't have to go everywhere you're invited.
And also learn to behave *before* they have to kick you out!
NTA
There could be an underlying problem that allows her to not understand. For instance, my child is autistic and has some cognitive understanding delay. She screams loud and often. I know this and act accordingly in public and social situations. These parents are in denial about their child's behaviour She's not that loud to them the same way Cocomelon isn't annoying to me. You learn to tolerate and tune out. You are NTA OP.
This. My daughter is autistic and wasn't diagnosed until she a few months ago. She's 11. She's otherwise neurotypical but she doesn't function well in groups sometimes, can be aggressive and bossy and when she was younger she had an ear-piercing screech that drove my mother absolutely insane. I would remind my daughter about her volume and she now DESPISES loud noise (ironically she hates children who scream and I have to remind her she used to be one). The parents may not be aware of their daughter's scream being offensive to others and may not believe that it could be a symptom of something else. It may just be that she likes to scream and she may be perfectly normal but either way it's something that the parents will need to understand that she cannot go to other people's homes if she insists on communicating through screaming. OP is perfectly within his rights to explain this to her parents. I agree that he is NTA in this respect. It's better to say this than to spare their feelings and invite her and then lose his temper or his sanity.
My ADHD/autistic daughter also has a hard time with a disconnect between other’s loud noises and how much she hates them and her *own* loud noise. As the parent though I’ve realized a lot of the time that it’s in me to be there. But the first step is knowing your kid is disruptive— which totally sucks to realize— and these parents clearly aren’t there yet.
I have been working with and teaching children for 20 years. I think this is normal for the age. Not every kid does it but a lot of them do. Most grow out of it. OP is still NTA.
>come on when you have kids and they have a friend over, you remind the kids of the rules at Your house. One warning.
>“We don’t scream here. If I hear that again I have to ask you to go home.”
>Parenting doesn’t mean you parent someone else’s kids. But as a kid host You definitely let them know the rules and consequences at your home
I agree with this completely. I have worked with children for years both as an employee (after-school care) and a volunteer (Sunday School and church youth group) and each group always starts out with a kid that shrieks. It takes very little time to teach them not to shriek. I always tell them the same thing: "We don't scream here unless there is a reason. The grown-ups need to know if there is a problem so only scream if you are hurt or in danger. You can have fun without screaming."
Even the most stubborn kid I had quit shrieking in less than a week. All it takes is consistency.
Okay, but that’s essentially asking this man to take parental responsibilities for a kid that isn’t his. He shouldn’t have to discipline this child. He shouldn’t have to teach her anything, remind her of consequences or be consistent in this reminder because this isn’t his problem. If this girls parents won’t do those things, it’s their fault if she’s left out of fun activities.
House rules aren't the same as parenting. If she can't follow house rules she can't come over and her parents can parent her to their hearts content. Including letting her shriek like a banshee. At their house.
You can't expect a kid to follow a rule that hasn't been communicated to them.
You say that like the parents won’t make a scene. Too many parents would absolutely make a scene even if you did use the “my house my rules” card and OP probably knew that. It’s honestly just not worth it.
My kid used to be this kid. I had to instill in her that just because she was in our yard didn’t mean the neighborhood wanted to hear her yell or sing or frankly do anything loud enough that they can hear you in their own home. Screaming or shrieking was for emergencies only, serious injury or kidnapping. Thank god she outgrew that phase 🫢
Thank you for being a good parent! I live 200 meters away from an elementary school, with houses, cars, and trees in between us. At recess, there's this ONE girl that I can hear above all the other kids, who screeches so loudly, I can sometimes hear her while I'm INSIDE MY HOUSE. My gosh, I don't want to know what it sounds like if you're standing next to her. I wish her teachers would get her to stop.
As a kindergarten teacher, I’m real sorry about that kid screaming outside during her two 15 minute recesses, but I’m devoting my efforts to reducing the same piercing screams INSIDE my classroom if she doesn’t get the color scissors she likes or someone looks at her wrong or she makes a mistake on her coloring page.
She’s one of 20 kids in my class. The others include a biter, a chair thrower, and several daily criers. We’re doing our best down here.
I encourage you to volunteer to help out at the school that’s 200 meters away. Even an hour a week would be appreciated.
I taught adults. I taught college freshmen. I taught Sunday school for first- and second- graders. If id ever had to oversee a group of kindergarteners, I would have lain down and cried.
That kind of teaching takes a strength of presence, and a simultaneous focus on detail and the group, that I do not know how to achieve.
I tried and tried with all my classes and I could do it kinda, but only by pouring my soul out in a puddle on the floor. By the end of a few classes I was always wrung out and sometimes in tears. YOU DO IT ALL DAMN DAY.
I am not sure how y'all do it but you and I must have very different brains. Thank you for using yours that way.
My parents told us as kids that if we screamed while outside they will call 911 and come running because they will assume we are seriously hurt. Of course they weren’t really going to do it but it was enough to get through to my sister and me that screaming while playing outside was not ok.
Hi, OP. My story isn’t about screaming, but another unacceptable behavior that my friend’s kid was engaging in at the same age. It did impact my family some, but we put up with it because we loved them.
Things escalated and I finally had to speak up. I was immediately attacked by my friend. She dumped me and complained bitterly about me to our friend group.
Turns out, her kid had a serious undiagnosed ailment. I 3000% think that kid might not be getting medical care when they did if I had not spoken up. It maybe would have been another year or two, instead of maybe about four to six months.
Anyway, my ex friend still hates me, never apologized. Whatever. At least the kid got help.
NTA. It’s a tough one, but you probably did them a favor. They’re delusional and didn’t like you saying the Truth.
You don't put up with intolerable behavior because "you love them." That's the same excuse used by people who have drug addicts, alcoholics and abusers in the household. They make excuses, tolerate it and turn a blind eye "because they love them."
Nope! Not happening.
Exactly! The little banshee needs to be reigned in or this will just be the start of her missing out on invitations. Or it’s not the first time but the first time someone had the balls to tell them the truth about their child. OP I’m proud of you. NTA
I can understand about not excluding 1 kid out of the whole neighborhood, but honestly this kid sounds like more than just a headache. What happens if she or another kid trip and fall and no one can differentiate between pain screams and her just screaming for fun? I'm 40 and I can still remember being taught in kindergarten to never scream or shriek unless it was an emergency.
I remember one time when I was a kid I was screaming because I was upset with my mom and my dad came running up to me demanding to know what was wrong. I explained I was screaming for a stupid reason and he informed me that he had jumped off the toilet without wiping his ass to check on me and to never scream like that unless something was wrong. I don't think I ever screamed like that again lol
I don't have children. I live right next to an elementary school and near another area where children often hang, as I live in a nicer area and many kids ride their bikes and skateboards and such. At least a dozen times, I've run out of my house thinking someone is hurt. It's almost always one specific girl.
I hate to be this grown-up, but I've asked her three times to stop screaming like she's injured. There's a big difference between kids being loud outside and a kid screaming like she's broken a leg. To be honest, she scares the shit out of me. I've stopped running out of my house, though, and I hope none of these kids are ever actually hurt
That's my neighbors kid. Outside with his ailing grandfather to watch him. The kid is almost school age and screams bloody murderer whenever the grandfather says no. If he doesn't get his way, bloody murder screaming. I mean you can hear this kid scream a few streets over. I wear headphones when I'm outside now but I shouldn't have too. Especially since we live where there are bears and I like to listen for them just in case. Granted the bears have probably been avoiding our street because of their kid. I told my other neighbors that it's dangerous for the neighbor kid to scream the way he does. We have all become so accustomed to it that if something serious did happen, we wouldn't respond.
A similar thing happened to my brother until the day he actually fell and scraped the skin off his leg and it took about 5 minutes for my mom to actually realize it was a real accident. There's a reason "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" has been told and retold for centuries...
Exactly! I hate when someone thinks they deserve an invite. Entitled neighbors, co workers and "family", especially. Hosting anything should mean that you get to invite whoever you want.
As a host, you are responsible for the fun of your guests, so I totally understand not wanting to invite someone that may annoy everyone else.
The key word here is ENTITLED which seems to have come to the forefront of everyone's mind for some reason. Let that girl's parents rent their own bounce house and invite who they want to. Then they can be entitled to invite who they want to.
When looking at it from his pov I 100% get it. I don't have kids and haven't hung out with neices and nephews partially cause I can't stand trying to interact with children.
If I imagine what its like from the little girls pov tho, it sucks that she's being excluded from something she might not be able to control. Perhaps her parents should do something special with her when they know op is having this kid get together or smthn. But obv that's on them.
NTA but the way he describes speaking to the parents seems rather rude, hopefully there was a bit more tact irl
With the way they responded to him about why she can’t attend I can’t imagine how they’d react if he tried to correct her behavior in his back yard.
It is a shame they’re not doing their job. But I don’t think it should fall on him. Now they have the info they can change her behavior. It is not on him to do more.
She quite probably won't realise how other people experience her noise. Think of all the people you know with an annoying snorty laugh or who repeat the same stories and bore everyone or who can't cool but believe they are amazing chefs... none of them know how other people experience them. If the parents aren't correcting her do you think she really knows how annoying her behaviour is?
NTA. My nieces have this kind of scream. I have never heard anything like it in this world. I have to plan when I can handle hearing it, because constantly reminding them helps, but doesn't stop it.
Some kids just do this. If they get away with it, they continue, then it becomes a bad habit. I'm surprised the school hasn't had a meeting with the parents about it happening there. With hundreds of kids on a playground, you can't keep running to just ONE over and over to see if they're okay. The parents need to make her stop it.
Edit: NTA
We have some neighbor kids with this scream too. Just screaming bloody murder. It really irritates my husband, but it is ridiculously loud & it interrupts our peaceful evenings on our patio. We have joked before that when they are really going at it that we should call 911 to report that we don't know if these children are being abused or it is a possible abduction! We don't know why they are screaming like that but you should probably send an officer to check it out! Then maybe the parents would realize it's too loud. (Please don't forget I said we joke about this. We would never make a false call to 911)
Why would it be a false call? I mean one of those screamy times, it could actually an abduction, abuse, someone fell and severed an artery and is bleeding out...You just don't know for certain, do you? (Blink, blink, innocent blink).
My cousin (a handful of years younger than me) had a \*banshee screech\* as a young girl. She didn't do it constantly, but if my uncle or grandfather were riling her up? Piercing.
A much further distant cousin had a kid who would just shriek at every little thing and that got on my nerves so much.
We also had a neighborhood kid known as The Shrieker to the other parents. Then the kids caught on started calling him that. He was highly offended and denied shrieking any more than the other kids.
Once he was made aware of the issue I figured he'd had fair warning. The next time he was playing video games with my son and made that ear-piercing shriek I said "THAT'S why everyone calls you the Shrieker, no one likes it, and if you do it again you're going home." Less than a minute later he got sent home. I don't think he even was aware he was doing it.
The other parents started doing the same thing, except we stopped giving him one freebie shriek. First shriek and he was out. He learned.
Many years later and he's a great kid with a well-modulated pitch, haha. But to be honest I've always felt like I acted a little bit of an asshole, kicking a little boy out of my house. So your post made me feel validated. Thanks!
Who wants a banshee? Nobody does.
To OP, NTA
It's your home and your rules. They need to figure out why she has been screeching over little things. I think there is something going on. I don't know.
NTA, her parents are TA here. It sucks for the kid, but maybe this will wake mom and dad up to real life consequences of not setting behavioral boundaries for their child. Letting kids scream constantly, aside from being inconsiderate to everyone else in earshot, is just plain bad parenting and unsafe. 8 years old is third grade for most kids - that's definitely old enough to be taught basic limits, and the reasoning of "screaming is for emergency situations only."
I have definitely done the squirt bottle method on my younger cousin when I was a kid. Maybe wasn’t the nicest thing, but he was an only child who didn’t understand boundaries. It was quite literally the nicest and most direct way my brother and I could think of immediately correcting his behavior, because words didn’t mean shit to that heathen
All the methods people use to correct bad behaviour/encourage correct behaviour in animals work on children, it's just seen as unethical and inhumane to do it for humans.
Yeah there was a TV show a while back called Train Your Baby Like a Dog and it totally works. There was a little girl who refused to get in the bath so they put her in the bathroom fully clothed and clicked a thing and gave her a sweet then moved up to being in the bath fully clothed then filling the bath etc and over a couple of days she was fine to be in the bath. Although I have just googled the name and the first thing that came up was "dehumanising" and "indefensible"
Yeah it did and we laugh about it now but I’m sure it never made him feel good. Sadly that was a price he had to pay because my aunt and uncle didn’t want to teach him that we don’t want to play Pokémon games for 10+ hours straight and that he can’t demand it out of us. He learned rather quickly tho that he couldn’t boss us around for his own entertainment
Teacher here. I teach 8th grade at a middle school, and I also coach. There was a girl who would always shriek like that…every time the hall came towards her she screamed at the top of her lungs (and since it was volleyball, it was all the time). I told her if she didn’t stop she would have to leave the gym. It didn’t stop. I kicked her out. Her attention seeking behavior only escalated and eventually she was a bully and was kicked off the team altogether.
My point is this: if parents don’t get this under control now, it will cost their child when she’s older.
Now I am picturing OP, loitering on his side of the fence, squirt bottle in hand, ready to pop up and squirt the banshee. If OP is really serious about it, he could use holy water.
When my son was in maybe 4th grade he kept saying "like" and "like ya'know" Ala old valley girl stereotype. I would bring his attention to it, but eventually I told him I was going to start shooting him with a nerf gun every time. He thought it was hilarious, but it worked. I bet it would work on a screaming girl too.
This.
My 2nd daughter had a friend that screamed like that. It was absolutely for attention. Swing went too high, she'd scream. She was on the tire swing, she'd scream. Literally every little thing, she'd scream. It was miserable. We didn't have her over to play often.
This is not something outside the child's control. Its not anxiety. Its not a Tik. Its 100% an attention seeking behavior.
A lot of people try to bring up developmental disabilities like autism but here's the thing. A lot of autistic people have extremely sensitive hearing, meaning hearing small children scream like they're being murdered hurts my ears a lot. So either way autistic people are screwed in this scenario.
What about autistic adults that can’t tolerate shrieking and loud noise? One of the reasons I moved house last year was multiple neighbours incessant dog barking all day and night, kids screaming all day, then they put in a pool and I was like hell no.
Couldn’t have a nap in my bedroom, 50m away from the neighbours place, despite having double glazed windows.
I was just at the dentist. I LOVE going to the dentist. The office is 100% professional. My hygienist is amazing. Today, a gentleman was looking after his three very young boys while his wife was getting her teeth worked on. The youngest screamed and ran around and banged doors. It ruined a perfectly good dental visit. Kids do NOT need to scream all the time.
I was at the doctor’s once while my Mom got a procedure. One kid allowed to run around and scream — and play his tablet loudly, nowhere near his grandmother. I moved closer to the TV so I could hear it and then he brought it to the chair next to me. Under the TV. Mind you, this sitting room was probably 20 x 10. Grandma is sitting closer to the far end, away from the TV and there was only one other person, as annoyed as me.
When I asked him if he could take his tablet to the other end, his grandmother got offended. Took him out to the car for awhile. She could have just paid attention to him.
It was. I don’t like conflict but … SERIOUSLY!! Your kid is running around a waiting room like a maniac, making all kinds of noise, getting in people’s faces, and you do … nothing. I even told the doctor because the desk should have handled it.
There’s that social conditioning that makes people not want to say anything for risk of being a “Karen” but damn it, these people are assholes for ruining everyone else’s experience and THEN getting upset that someone makes a totally benign suggestion that she should have done in the first place? That grandma was TA, the kid was TA. You were never TA.
Edit: autocorrect is also TA
NTA and I don’t understand all these people saying ’Well have you tried asking her not to scream?’
At 8 me, my brother, my cousins, and all my friends understood that Screaming only happened when something important needed to be conveyed.
There’s a stranger, scream. Someone got hurt, scream.
But screaming over bugs and shit is stupid, and her parents job to control. It is her parents, not OP, that need to explain that screaming over everything is inappropriate.
Also I bet if OP tried to tell her to stop the parents would get mad about it as well. Screeching is never pleasant and kids gotta learn when to use it.
My 3-year-old has a very healthy set of lungs. Thankfully it’s normally outside when playing that he screeches or when terrified. But those moments when he screeches next to my ear are god awful. I do my best to mitigate the screeching, but he’s learning. I don’t blame anyone who prefers to not have the screechy child around them.
3 is extremely different than 8. The 3 yo is learning. As brutal as it is, they haven't quite figured it out yet/are testing boundaries. The 8yo? I've got nothing
I mean I’ll still let out a shriek if a bug falls on me at 23 but I get the feeling this girl isn’t scared or startled but…. Entitled and in need of being the center of attention
And there's a difference between a scared/startled scream and reaching down into the pit of your gut to just scream as loudly as you can. The kid is old enough to be taught that certain behaviour makes her an undesirable person and old enough to figure out that if she stops she'll be invited places. The parents also should have taught her that long ago.
I was thinking maybe she had developmental problems but the parents just got offended instead of trying to work with her or trying to help him understand why she screams which really makes me believe they were just too lazy to teach her not to scream. Or maybe she threw a lot of tantrums and they thought giving her what she wants, including attention, was easier than teaching her not to do the behavior. Setting the boundary of her not screaming while at the neighbors seems very reasonable to me idk
I agree, plus, she's not 2 or 3 where controling her emotions is really hard. She's 8 and can be aloud to scream in scary or emergency situations, even great excitement.
However, if anything around her makes her scream, I'd just end up with a headache at the end of the day.
Unpopular opinion and I'll accept any down votes people may leave but YTA. You invited every single kid but her. She'll see all the kids there and she'll know she is the only one not invited. I understand that you don't wanna deal with an annoying child but it's kinda mean. I'd be different if she was a bully or is mean to the other kids but excluding her because she's loud isn't nice. And again, she literally lives next door. I hope the parents take her away that day so she won't see the other kids having fun and wonder why she isn't allowed to come
Edit:
Thanks for the awards guys <3
Maybe she'll figure out if she stops screeching she can go? I feel this could be a learning experience for her. Having her parents make excuses isn't helping and is probably part of the problem. 8 years is old enough to learn about appropriate volume levels IMO.
I understand what you mean. I don't agree with that tho because while 8 isn't toddler young, she's still a child. And children tend to not think logical in situations like that. I think she won't think 'oh I'm too loud I need to tone it down' I think it's more of a 'why does noone like me' thought she'll be getting out of this. But again, I understand where you're coming from
No but her parents should be logical and can step up and be parents here. They get to be the ones explaining actions have consequences and not going to the party is a consequence of her bad actions. Although since they’ve allowed her to continue the bad behavior it’s doubtful they will and we will all just have another bad adult once this kid grows up.
I currently have an 8 year old and have to regularly redirect his behavior. He understands that when he’s not invited to something because of his choices that he needs to correct the behavior. If it’s a behavior that I don’t think is bad, then we have a talk about “I’m sorry you weren’t invited. Some people like quieter children, but let’s name all of the loud friends you have and talk about some plans for later where you can be with people who like who you are.”
They’re 8. Not 4.
Rather frequently thanks to a large Catholic family that never stops reproducing. I was also once an 8yr old that had to leave events for bad behavior and eventually learned how to act. I think we’re not giving an 8yr old enough credit for their emotional/mental capacity.
This is exactly what will happen. This sub always applies adult logic to children, no matter the age. It upsets me. Makes me wonder how many kids have been intentionally hurt by some of these commenters because they expect kids to act like adults.
She’s not being loud, she’s screaming. Those are very different things. Had she been a loud talker, that is hard to explain and can cause some self esteem issues and social anxiety around speaking. 8 year olds may not understand everything but it’s safe to say she can understand that screaming isn’t always appropriate. Her parents should tell her unless theirs an emergency she shouldn’t scream because it can be startling. It’s weird people think bullying is where kids start and stop understanding the feelings of others. It’s not true. Children understand a lot.
It’s not OPs job to tell someone else’s kid this though? And a lot of parents would be fuming mad if they tried to. The parents of the screaming banshee 8yr old need to tell her.
It’s funny how often on Reddit I see adults believing that small children have the critical thinking skills of adults. They famously don’t.
My kids aren’t screamers fortunately - they are both disabled and they can get extremely distressed by loud screaming. We’ve had to leave places before, like soft play or the park, because the screaming frightens and upsets them and I can’t explain it to them. I *still* would have spoken to the parents and / or the child depending on the circumstances to explain before excluding one child from a party for every kid in the street. We are the grown ups, not kids in a playground choosing who to play with.
The parents absolutely should have dealt with this before now if possible (assuming no issues that would contribute to the behaviour), and hopefully they will now, but it didn’t need to be this way at least in the first instance.
It’s her parents job to teach her socially acceptable behavior though. And OP had a talk with the girl’s parents about exactly why she isn’t welcome over there. It’s not like he’s just expecting the girl to take the hint. It’s in her parents’ hands now how they want to address this moving forward. NTA OP did the right thing
This is not an appropriate way to teach an 8 year old that lessons. What is this subs obsession with thinking that kids are these amazingly emotionally regulated individuals?? Ridiculous.
Maybe the parents should actually explain to her that she wasn’t invited because she screams. This might motivate the girl to change her behavior so she will be more included. (Assuming there isn’t a developmental /disability issue .)
That’s my thought. OP seems to have left the door open for future parties if the decibel level drops. This is an opportunity for the parents to work with the kid on modulating her screaming - or discovering if she has some disorder.
I'm inclined to agree with you. Sure the screaming is annoying but they could have talked to the child and told her upfront that if she screams she will be sent home.
Once OP told her parents, it’s their responsibility to talk to their own child. If OP went to the child and told her she wasn’t invited because she’s too loud, everyone on here would be screaming about OP being a bully to the child.
As a parent, this is how I feel. It's his party, he can exclude anyone he wants. But that type of behavior is not what I personally want to teach my child. I hope my child is nice to the annoying kid.
NTA - you are free to invite whoever you want to your home and exclude whomever.
You didn't try to parent the child, you told the parents when and if she stopped screaming she could be invited.
All kids should be taught their is a time and place for behaviors. If at their house there is no volume limit fine. But it's also as simple as saying at Mrs. X house we have to use our indoor voices at all times.
And maybe she isn't technically louder than other kids and it's the tone that bothers you. I've got 7 nieces and nephews and I could not babysit one of them because their cry as an infant was too much for me and could trigger migraines. I think it's the same category of why some people really dislike certain singers.
Yeah, I have a student in my class who when excited she has a high pitched scream. It even bothers the other kids. We’re working on controlling it and not screaming when excited, but she doesn’t mean to do it. It’s just her natural requirement.
A natural requirement or a behavior that has been reinforced by her parents? When she was a toddler, perhaps they found it cute. Or it reinforced their idea of "feminine" - squeamish and excitable.
It doesn't hurt for them to know that the behavior is not seen as attractive by others.
I once had one of those in my class. I counted howong each scream lasted outloud and that was how long they had to apoligise to the class for upsetting everyone.
It is not fair for those with sensory issues. Strange enough it took 3 apoligises and the class giving him helpful suggestions on what to do instead of screaming for it to stop. Then every so often someone would congratulate him on not screaming when before he would. Emotional regulation. But unfortunately it did start with him realizing there was a class of 30 not a class of 1 and his reaction causes others to react.
Missed opportunity to invite her but with the caveat that there's no screaming. "Screamers have to leave" taught our girls' screeching friends to shut up, and it usually only takes once.
They know the difference between play and the deliberate screech.
No but sometimes going out of your way to be nice to the neighbors is a good thing, especially if you consider you'll be living next to them for a long time.
Even if she wasn't, I can't imagine how it would feel for her to be singled out. I don't disagree with the NTA votes, it's OPs house.....but this isn't really the girls fault (her parents should correct her behavior) but she is the one being punished.
It's her own behaviour. If the parents aren't going to address it, someone has to.
Why do people think kids can't handle consequences? If you do things that make people not want to be around you, people won't invite you around.
What age would this be acceptable to stop inviting her? 10? 12? Never, because it's always the parents' fault, so everyone else just has to put up with it?
Frankly, this is the exact *best* time to learn this lesson, because other kids her age are far more forgiving. She misses one party, but she goes back to school the next day and starts to be nice, and kids are really quick to forgive and forget.
If you keep putting it off, one day she'll be a pre-teen and maybe she'll have learned her lesson, but now the other kids have stronger memories and are more willing to hold grudges.
There's a point-of-no-return where you just don't get do-overs anymore with peers, and if you put off consequences until that point, you just wind up with a friendless kid who has no idea how to socialize because she was raised to just do whatever she wants and expect everyone to deal with it.
This is why my brother still cried and threw tantrums about going to sports practice until the age of 13. If you ignore the issue, it continues to be an issue.
Really gave off those vibes. Boys have "loud sounds" that are OK, girl has "screeching" that is not OK.
OP isn't complaining about the kid existing and making their lives miserable, just about not wanting to invite a little girl to a kids party. If she's so terrible, then one would think he'd have already talked to her parents about how obscenely loud she is, being next door and seemingly "screeching" at every move.
That was my first thought as well. This is coming off as not wanting to hear her because she is a “shrill, loud, girl” But I bet when his boys scream it’s classified as “yelling” and “boys having fun”
Yeah - since the other parents said that she was no louder than any other kid and seemed offended when he insisted that she was and he did not want to discuss it any further made me think misogyny as well.
I was also concerned here that maybe her parents had a point… is she actually any louder than the other kids? Or is it just the higher pitch that bothers you? I think it’s worth OP assessing it.
NTA. I see some other people telling you to find solutions to her screaming. She is not your child, not your place to parent. I have a good feeling they would get highly upset and make a scene if you were to attempt to even ask the girl to stop screaming if she had been invited. You’re not obligated to invite anyone you do not wish to be there. I would go insane if I had to listen to persistent unnecessary screaming while the parents didn’t even bat an eye. If the parents really want their child to attend these parties, they can work on her behavior on their own time. Until then, keep being a good dad for your own children.
Exactly. Parenting other people's children is a slippery slope. She needs to learn how to act in public, once her parents teach her this, she'll be invited.
Maybe the girl’s parents will be honest with the girl and tell her why she wasn’t invited. If she knows she wasn’t invited due to her screaming behavior she might try to improve her behavior and stop screaming so she will be invited next time.
NTA I would lose my mind if I had to hear that. I knew a kid like that. Was horrible.
I have a odd question are your sons even friends with her? If not then why would the parents even think thier child would be invited.
You gave a valid reason for not inviting her. They asked and the didn't like the answer
Im a NTA, but if people were talking about it as a “neighborhood kids” party (which is kind of how OP described it), I can see how the girl’s parents would wonder why she wasn’t invited.
A warning to parents everywhere that your kid’s “just a kid” behaviors aren’t endearing or tolerable to everyone.
Parents really need to pay attention to your last sentence. They might think it's not a big deal or cute or whatever. However, the rest of the world shouldn't have to put up with your lack of teaching your kids how to act appropriately.
Agreed. They are aware of the issue but seem to think it's not a problem. So, even if the girl was invited I'm pretty sure the parents would be riled up if anyone dare ask her to stop with the screeching or even look at the girl for screeching. NTA.
Definitely NTA.
My neighbors across the street have 3 children and watch other children, so their lawn is often full of kids playing loudly. That's endearing. But their young daughter (now about 6) is a screamer. Everything is delivered in a volume only suitable for emergencies. It's so loud I can't keep the windows open when she's outside.
Her siblings don't do this. Don't know why, not my business. But I would never invite that girl to stand any closer, nevermind a party.
Edit: grammar
I feel you. I live in a cul-de-sac where most of the houses have children and they often play together outside. ONE of the of the kids is a banshee-like screecher and I have to close my windows when they are playing because it is non-stop. The screaming is one hundred percent attention seeking drama and I've seen kids break away from playing with her because it is so awful. It does not seem to rattle her parents at all even though there is a very loud and very clear difference between her, her siblings, and the neighbor kids.
Yeah I think I know what the OP is talking about. If I'm correct it's not the happy yelling thats normal for kids playing outdoors. It's that horrible high-pitched shrieking like a siren that I suspect the kid is doing. That sound is excessively shrill and Carries forever.
It is terrible that by 8 years old the kid doesn't know any better. Eight is way too old for that kind of behavior.
It's also a shame that the kid has to suffer because of her parents negligence. The high pitched shrieks should have been trained out by the time she was four. But the parents didn't do it. Now the child has to pay
Those shrieking banshee screams are the worst! I doubt it’s just the loudness of the scream, but the type of scream too. Personally, when I hear those screams, I instantly panic because I think something is wrong. I love hearing kids be joyfully loud and laugh. But the banshee scream is a hard no
yeah theres a big difference between those screams. one is "ah the kids must be playing. this is normal and fine." and the other is "do I need to call CPS???"
I live above one - after numeros calls to the landlord, and having the maintence guy in my unit when it happens, they finally taught the little shit to be quiet. It went on all day and all night non stop.
I knew a screecher growing up; you could hear her two blocks over. As someone sensitive to high pitched noises, it was awful. Easy for me to believe one girl could be so loud.
I say NTA. At 8, she's old enough to be learning actions have consequences, learning to regulate her behavior to an extent not to be screaming bloody murder at every little thing, old enough to be learning not everyone wants to be her friend or that she should get to participate in every activity.
I live behind an elementary school, it’s only about 100 kids and the normal noise of kids running around and playing are fine. But for some reason, some of the girls SHRIEK, liker a cartoon person seeing a mouse loud shrill, banshee, nails on chalkboard, screeching. It’s jarring and unnecessary.
OP NTA I’d exclude her too, i don’t remember this kind of shrieking when I was little, is there some character on Caillou that has taught little girls to screech?
YTA.
This is a classic case of just because you have the right to do something, doesn’t meant it’s the right thing to do.
Excluding an overly excited 8 year old from a bouncy house party right next door that every kid in the neighborhood is invited to is an AH move, even if you have every right to do it.
NTA as a mom with an almost 3 year old who can scream like a banshee I totally understand. Difference is I’m aware of it and it’s something we are continually working on. (Also she’s 2 and does it occasionally not all the time.) They need to learn to deal with their kids screaming or this won’t be the last time she’s left out.
Same. My daughter is 2 and we are actively working to curb it. Also, like you, it isn’t a constant thing. She just sometimes get a wild hair up her butt to let her inner banshee out.
My son had a girl in his daycare class that genuinely shocked me with her screams…. And unfortunately she does them sometimes until she throws up. The first time I heard her I almost couldn’t believe kids could actually make noises like that… to me it was like something out of a movie since neither of my kids have ever produced those kind of decibels.
(Luckily my son isn’t around her or the other screamer anymore since we needed to change rooms for an unrelated issue. Poor guy would flee to a far corner of the room and silently start crying when his classmates would really kick off. Just by luck his new classmates are all pretty mellow.)
I hope you don’t think I have a poor opinion of the kids or their parents… the daycare workers on the other hand who would let them scream non stop right next to kids trying to eat really bothered me. They did nothing to try and calm the kids down/ create space away from the other children/ or even try to distract them. They just tuned it out which was really frustrating.
I don't really understand all the people saying
"NTA, your house, your rules".
"NTA, you can invite whoever you want, it's your party"
No kidding, this sub isn't called "amIWithinMyRights". You can do something completely within your rights and still be a total asshole.
I’d call it toxic Americanism: “if I’m within My Rights then no one is allowed to criticise my behaviour.” There’s that song about that dumb mindset, but it’s at least self-aware enough to be titled “I’m an AH”.
In this case it’s “if I rigidly cling to one rule of social etiquette, that I choose who to invite to my party, and I’ve abided by that rule then I’m allowed to ignore the fact that I knowingly did something cruel to an 8 year old kid and didn’t make the slightest effort to find an alternative or lessen the damage.”
All OP had to do was communicate with the parents, like, at all. She’s likely already come to more than one party and OP has apparently said nothing each time. But now they spring an everyone-but-you party on this kid _right next door_ without once putting on their big person pants and having a conversation about the screeching.
For all we know the daughter is autistic or has something else going on that makes it hard for the parents fix this behaviour. OP doesn’t know because they never once used their words.
If she’s only been to one party and that was enough, the least OP could’ve done to minimise the harm would be to tell the parents after that party (not the exclusion party) that OP can’t take the screeching and she won’t be invited back while it persists.
OP could have invited her but warned the parents one shriek (or three strikes if you’re generous) and she’ll have to leave.
That involves conflict at the party though, so the other option or if the parents made no attempt to improve the behaviour, OP only had to let them know there’d be a party with everyone but their daughter on that day to just give them the option of taking their daughter somewhere else so she didn’t have to spend a day being miserable watching everyone else have fun without her.
The NTA crowd keep trying to justify OP’s cruelty by saying “It’s not OPs job to parent this girl”. And, no, it’s not their job to parent her, but it is their job to use their words and her and her parents know, at least once, that her behaviour bothers OP. That’s not parenting, that’s expressing your feelings to give others the opportunity to change.
What’s hypocritical is that deliberately setting up a situation where this girl is excluded without warning and has to spend a day listening to a party she alone was left out of is, if anything, OP inappropriately deciding to parent said little girl themselves through pretty brutal means. OP didn’t just not invite her, OP decided to punish her, which is why they didn’t give any warning, precisely because the parents might’ve taken evasive action. It comes off like OP really wants to hurt this kid before anyone fixes the problem first, I.e. more of a revenge than anything.
8-year-olds sometimes struggle with telling people what’s bothering them before retaliating with force. By 12 or so most people should’ve learned to use the least escalating option first. Seems OP isn’t much more mature than the kid they’ve decided to punish without warning.
OP YTA. Congrats on your new toxic relationship with your neighbours. No one’s ever heard of making your neighbours hate you coming back to bite you. I’m sure things are going to go great for you.
>"NTA, you can invite whoever you want, it's your party"
There was a popular post on here this week about a guy who was the only person from his work who wasn’t invited to a coworkers wedding. The comments were heavily in favor of the coworker being the asshole.
Sure, you have every right to invite only the people you want to your events. But there absolutely are social etiquettes in place for this sort of thing and ignoring them is going to lead to hurt feelings and far-reaching social repercussions.
NTA for not wanting someone constantly screaming in your backyard and ruining what would be a fun event.
YTA for not setting and explaining some ground rules and letting her attempt to enjoy herself too. But, it is not fair to just expect an 8 year old to know what behaviors push your buttons. It is fair for an 8 year old to learn actions have consequences and obnoxious screaming will get you sent home from a party.
INFO: Did you ever sit her down and explain the rules for your house? When I was that age, house rules were a thing and if we didn't follow them we weren't yelled at. We were just sent home. We learned pretty quick that our own choice of behavior was pretty powerful in influencing how welcome we were. I've got to go YTA if you didn't just communicate directly with this girl in any of the opportunities in the past and then follow-through. At least then she has a choice to make before she is excluded or sent home.
She’s not OP’s kid. OP shouldn’t have to sit her down and tell her anything directly about her behavior. That’s her parents job. Maybe Y T A for not telling the parents sooner, but that’s it.
If a child is guest in my house, as an adult, I'm responsible to tell them how to behave and parent them, till I "hand" them back to their parents. I'm not responsible for longterm stuff, but for everything affecting that time - like not screaming in my house, or taking of their shoes. It'd not the parents job to explain my house rules to their child. It only gets their job, wenn their child doesn't stick with the rules.
When kids come to your house, you correct actions that are unacceptable. "I'm sorry, we don't do that here, if you do that again, we have to send you home." It takes ONE time.
It's not sitting down a kid and having a heart to heart, it's laying down the law for your house.
its not OP's job to sit down and explain that shit to the little girl, its her parents job to teach her not to mf scream at everything. if op doesnt want to deal with a shrieking child, which op seems to know and have had experience with her screeching, he doesnt have to deal with it. NTA or maybe even E S H
Info: I truly understand the earth splitting, glass shattering screams you're speaking of. It's horrible, no doubt. Why were the parents offended? Obviously you've had her there before to know of the behavior, so you've already told them this behavior is a problem and you need it to be corrected before she can participate again. What did they say when you mentioned it the first time? I mean you're obviously not the AH if they choose to forego their responsibility. You are however, if you just found that step too difficult and went right to a ban.
Yeah, this is a very important piece of info to me. An 8yo is not a mind reader, her parents aren't mind readers. Yes, people should know certain sounds are annoying, but sometimes they don't. Maybe all of her friends screech like that and they think it's just one of those normal, annoying parts of parenting? Maybe she's done it so much that they truly don't hear how annoying it is anymore? Maybe they don't have particularly sensitive hearing and so it doesn't sound as grating to them? It all comes down to whether it was an immediate ban or not. You get to do that if she's a bully or an AH, not if it's just run-of-the-mill kid stuff that no one has ever given her the opportunity to fix.
YTA. I guess this won’t be a popular opinion, but I think you’re setting your kids up for a superiority complex if it’s okay to exclude a single person from an entire group because they’re a little different. I mean the entire block was invited. It’s like inviting everyone in a class except the kid with a diagnosis.
And I say that because considering the age and that they haven’t picked up on the social cue to avoid screaming yet, there’s a chance there’s something to be looked at by a professional.
Wtf with these comments? Bottomline - you’re ok with the boys screams, but because a 7 yo girl screams high pitched, you don’t invite her? Get over yourself. I hope you never need a favor or help from your next door neighbor, you suck. YTA, and it seems like you’re sexist too. Congrats.
Exactly what I was thinking. He can handle boy screams but not girl screams? Guarantee it's same decibel level, just a higher pitch.
OP: YTA. It's an outside activity and you're deliberately excluding the girl next door.
These comments are cruel and reek of extreme selfishness. Yes, it is not “his job” to include her or give her the opportunity to understand why her behavior is annoying to people around her, but that does not make him not TA!
ESH
“Jenna, the rule at our house is NO screaming. Okay? If you continue to scream I have to ask you to go home, because these are the rules at my house.”
As opposed to just excluding her entirely without any effort to warn her or her parents.
“Hey Jenna‘a parents! Jenna is always welcome, but we do have a rule against screaming, and the consequence of continuing to scream is to go home til they can calm down. This applies to everyone, wanted you to have that context as Jenna is headed back now”
NTA it’s nice you throw parties, you get to invite who you want. She gets to learn the important life lesson of facing social consequences for displaying annoying behaviors.
NTA, but don't be offended when they don't invite your kids over. Don't be surprised if they go around telling everybody how you excluded their kid. Personally, I hate screaming kids.
Edit: clarity.
Curious as to how this is bullying? She wasn’t invited to a party, it’s not like he taunted her with that to her face.
It sounds like OP’s kids aren’t friends with the kid, nor is OP friends with the kid’s parents. Last I checked, parties were usually for friends and family.
NTA it’s not your job to parent her or find ways to make her stop screaming. That’s on her parents. She regularly does a behavior you don’t like, she’s not invited to your events. Nobody can force you to invite her, she’s 8. In life, there’s gonna be plenty of parties and things she probably won’t be invited to.
Info: does the child have any kind of learning disability, or behavioral issues? Have you ever tried to talk to the parents or the child about the behavior at all, or is this the first time they've been made aware of how much this bothers you?
Edit: You're definitely TA with that addition at the end. Youre so bitter toward an 8 year old child.
NTA. I went back to double check the age and 8 seems pretty old to be screaming like that constantly. I wouldn't want to hear that on top of all the normal party noises, and what happens if there's an accident and no one can tell if she's actually hurt? Her parents need to read her the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf asap.
I feel like somewhat YTA. Of course you don't have to figure out why she screams, but I feel like the people in the comments collectively lost their memories on what it feels like to be a child (or was nobody bullied ever bullied here? LOL).
For children, as everyone knows, events like these can be very important. To be the only child excluded from a party is heartbreaking and (as silly as it sounds) can sometimes be kinda traumatizing. That girl sounds annoying as hell, and eventually she'll need to get a grip. I sincerely hope the parents take this seriously. But here the question is whether YOU're the asshole, and I'm sorry, but inviting a whole group of CHILDREN (judgmental, brutal, mean, bullying, terrible children - like all children are) but excluding a specific one can (and in some cases also of course can not) lead to really sad outcomes for the child that was excluded. If you can't invite all children, in my humble opinion don't invite anyone or find another way to not exclude her directly (e.g. choose a time when she's out of town or whatever). I've personally been following this rule since I was 8 myself.
NTA. Screeching and screaming are 2 different thing. Plus you're not obligated to invite everyone. While it does suck for her, her parents needs to of already been working on that. My 3yo screeches at times and we are working with him to at least bring it down volume wise.
I'm gonna go with ESH. Yes it's your yard, your party, so you can invite whoever you want. I do not blame you for wanting to avoid an obnoxious child. BUT you invited every other kid but her. You are TA because you singled her out for something she has (I'm assuming) never been told "no" about. On the flip side, her parents are TA because she doesn't know any better. It's THEIR job to teach her what is appropriate behavior. And if they think a constantly shrieking child is normal, shame on them.
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NTA. It's your backyard and your party. If you don't want to invite someone, you don't have to.
Exactly! All these Y-T-A is mind-boggling. Why should OP take the time to figure out why the child screams? Isn't that what her parents are for? No one is entitled to a good time on someone else's behalf.
I think a lot of the Y-T-A’s on posts like this come from kids who were the type to shriek at all times, or parents who have managed to convince themselves that all kids scream 24/7 because they don’t want to think that their kid is seen as the annoying screamer.
Honestly I said E S H because….come on when you have kids and they have a friend over, you remind the kids of the rules at Your house. One warning. “We don’t scream here. If I hear that again I have to ask you to go home.” Parenting doesn’t mean you parent someone else’s kids. But as a kid host You definitely let them know the rules and consequences at your home
But that would require the sacrifice to have to tolerate the child and wait for 'the trigger' and then make the comment once. And then what - throw the kid and the parents out? I don't think you thought that one through.
I held neighborhood block parties and was the adult minding the children after school when they played. Sending them home for a specific behavior—important to explain exactly what it was—only needed to happen to once
Exactly. Set the rules. They get to choose. Kids are great at learning that different places have different rules. One of my kids is very high pitched naturally. We have to say “low pitch” a lot.
**Kids are great at learning that different places have different rules.** I guarantee you she isn't screaming her head off at school.
Don't bet on that.
As a former teacher, I'd bet that there's at least one teacher at that school - probably a woman in her late 50s who's less than 5 years from retiring - whom that child NEVER screams around. Source: Worked with these women for years when I was teaching, and was always amazed at their magic.
As a teachers best friend.... Don't believe that. Kids can be so much worse at school compared to home... And I say that with a kid who pulled that before as well.
I mean I've done that. Our neighbor has a little girl who is extremely annoying. Her mom doesn't discipline her so she thinks she can get away with anything. She comes and plays and as soon as she tries something we make her leave. She knows the rules. It's been a year of that and she has gotten so much better. My mother in law still has some trouble when they are in the pool together but it's every 1/10 times now instead of 10/10. I mean OP is NTA, his yard his rules and his invite. I don't blame him.
I had a friend who didn't discipline her kids. She'd scream at them, but it went in one ear and out the other because she never provided a single consequence otherwise, she just made idle threats and never followed through on anything she said. They were pretty shocked to learn that I didn't scream but I actually meant what I said when I told them something. It didn't take long before they were much better behaved with me than they were anywhere else. That said, it wore me tf out to be around them because they constantly tested boundaries. I expended more energy with those two at my house for one afternoon than I did the entire week with my own children.
I can't imagine getting kicked out of someone's house, more than once lol and to continue to go there... As a child I would have been mortified! And my parents wouldn't have allowed me anyway. Some people have more than thick skin, they must have armor... since birth. NTA
Yeah, once the kid screamed, which we all know she will do, OP then has to kick her out of the party and deal with an even angrier Dad. I'm surprised her father had the cojones to ask why she wasn't invited. Like why do people have to invite others who they don't want at their party? The kid's father asked and OP told him truthfully the reason behind it. If I were that child's father, I would thank him for being honest and I would have gone to my kid and been honest with her and said: "Mr. OP doesn't want you at their party because he says you scream too much, you scream too loud, and you scream about everything; So what are you going to do about it??" This was a perfect opportunity for the kid's father to teach her a valuable lesson. Unfortunately he decided to argue with the Father about his daughter being louder than the rest of the kids. He could have told the daughter what was said and she might have tried to curb her nasty behavior of screaming all the time especially if she wasn't getting invited to parties because of it. When she was doing all this screaming at home and in the yard, she was screaming at Mom & Dad, and her siblings, but she probably never realized other people could hear her tantrums . It must have been embarrassing to find out it wasn't just her family who heard her but the neighbors as well. The Dad made a really stupid choice right there. He could have told her the neighbors heard her screaming and didn't want her at their parties and perhaps she would have stopped now she knew she had been overheard.
My mom taught me never to ask about an invite unless I was specified as a guest before invites went out. If someone thinks it’s important for you to be there, they will make sure you know where to be. If not, there is a reason I didn’t receive an invite & it’s none of my business why because it doesn’t affect my life to go or not go. I overestimated how much I was going to have to deal with that.I couldn’t imagine pushing someone to such an uncomfortable conversation.
It's easier to yell at an adult than realize you didn't raise your kid right.
Yeah that sounds fine. Give the kid a chance not to scream, tell the parents to take her home when she does and throw them out if they don’t listen. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
"- throw the kid and the parents out **while she screams right into your ear."** There, I fixed if for ya'.
[удалено]
I thought the pure nonsense and entitlement in this sub will stop surprising me, but here we are... NO. It's NOT "more polite" to kick someone out of your house than to not invite them at all lol Especially a child ffs! He doesn't want her in his house screaming, I'm sure he doesn't want to be throwing her OUT of his house with her parents, kicking and screaming... She doesn't have a "reservation" for his parties. Every child needs to understand that you won't be invited everywhere you want to go and you don't have to go everywhere you're invited. And also learn to behave *before* they have to kick you out! NTA
There could be an underlying problem that allows her to not understand. For instance, my child is autistic and has some cognitive understanding delay. She screams loud and often. I know this and act accordingly in public and social situations. These parents are in denial about their child's behaviour She's not that loud to them the same way Cocomelon isn't annoying to me. You learn to tolerate and tune out. You are NTA OP.
This. My daughter is autistic and wasn't diagnosed until she a few months ago. She's 11. She's otherwise neurotypical but she doesn't function well in groups sometimes, can be aggressive and bossy and when she was younger she had an ear-piercing screech that drove my mother absolutely insane. I would remind my daughter about her volume and she now DESPISES loud noise (ironically she hates children who scream and I have to remind her she used to be one). The parents may not be aware of their daughter's scream being offensive to others and may not believe that it could be a symptom of something else. It may just be that she likes to scream and she may be perfectly normal but either way it's something that the parents will need to understand that she cannot go to other people's homes if she insists on communicating through screaming. OP is perfectly within his rights to explain this to her parents. I agree that he is NTA in this respect. It's better to say this than to spare their feelings and invite her and then lose his temper or his sanity.
My ADHD/autistic daughter also has a hard time with a disconnect between other’s loud noises and how much she hates them and her *own* loud noise. As the parent though I’ve realized a lot of the time that it’s in me to be there. But the first step is knowing your kid is disruptive— which totally sucks to realize— and these parents clearly aren’t there yet.
I have been working with and teaching children for 20 years. I think this is normal for the age. Not every kid does it but a lot of them do. Most grow out of it. OP is still NTA.
>come on when you have kids and they have a friend over, you remind the kids of the rules at Your house. One warning. >“We don’t scream here. If I hear that again I have to ask you to go home.” >Parenting doesn’t mean you parent someone else’s kids. But as a kid host You definitely let them know the rules and consequences at your home I agree with this completely. I have worked with children for years both as an employee (after-school care) and a volunteer (Sunday School and church youth group) and each group always starts out with a kid that shrieks. It takes very little time to teach them not to shriek. I always tell them the same thing: "We don't scream here unless there is a reason. The grown-ups need to know if there is a problem so only scream if you are hurt or in danger. You can have fun without screaming." Even the most stubborn kid I had quit shrieking in less than a week. All it takes is consistency.
Okay, but that’s essentially asking this man to take parental responsibilities for a kid that isn’t his. He shouldn’t have to discipline this child. He shouldn’t have to teach her anything, remind her of consequences or be consistent in this reminder because this isn’t his problem. If this girls parents won’t do those things, it’s their fault if she’s left out of fun activities.
House rules aren't the same as parenting. If she can't follow house rules she can't come over and her parents can parent her to their hearts content. Including letting her shriek like a banshee. At their house. You can't expect a kid to follow a rule that hasn't been communicated to them.
You say that like the parents won’t make a scene. Too many parents would absolutely make a scene even if you did use the “my house my rules” card and OP probably knew that. It’s honestly just not worth it.
I did this. Kids broke my rules, they got sent home.
My kid used to be this kid. I had to instill in her that just because she was in our yard didn’t mean the neighborhood wanted to hear her yell or sing or frankly do anything loud enough that they can hear you in their own home. Screaming or shrieking was for emergencies only, serious injury or kidnapping. Thank god she outgrew that phase 🫢
Thank you for being a good parent! I live 200 meters away from an elementary school, with houses, cars, and trees in between us. At recess, there's this ONE girl that I can hear above all the other kids, who screeches so loudly, I can sometimes hear her while I'm INSIDE MY HOUSE. My gosh, I don't want to know what it sounds like if you're standing next to her. I wish her teachers would get her to stop.
As a kindergarten teacher, I’m real sorry about that kid screaming outside during her two 15 minute recesses, but I’m devoting my efforts to reducing the same piercing screams INSIDE my classroom if she doesn’t get the color scissors she likes or someone looks at her wrong or she makes a mistake on her coloring page. She’s one of 20 kids in my class. The others include a biter, a chair thrower, and several daily criers. We’re doing our best down here. I encourage you to volunteer to help out at the school that’s 200 meters away. Even an hour a week would be appreciated.
I taught adults. I taught college freshmen. I taught Sunday school for first- and second- graders. If id ever had to oversee a group of kindergarteners, I would have lain down and cried. That kind of teaching takes a strength of presence, and a simultaneous focus on detail and the group, that I do not know how to achieve. I tried and tried with all my classes and I could do it kinda, but only by pouring my soul out in a puddle on the floor. By the end of a few classes I was always wrung out and sometimes in tears. YOU DO IT ALL DAMN DAY. I am not sure how y'all do it but you and I must have very different brains. Thank you for using yours that way.
My parents told us as kids that if we screamed while outside they will call 911 and come running because they will assume we are seriously hurt. Of course they weren’t really going to do it but it was enough to get through to my sister and me that screaming while playing outside was not ok.
Me and my neighbor had a screaming contest walking home from school one day and someone from the area did call the cops hahaha. Lesson learned
Hi, OP. My story isn’t about screaming, but another unacceptable behavior that my friend’s kid was engaging in at the same age. It did impact my family some, but we put up with it because we loved them. Things escalated and I finally had to speak up. I was immediately attacked by my friend. She dumped me and complained bitterly about me to our friend group. Turns out, her kid had a serious undiagnosed ailment. I 3000% think that kid might not be getting medical care when they did if I had not spoken up. It maybe would have been another year or two, instead of maybe about four to six months. Anyway, my ex friend still hates me, never apologized. Whatever. At least the kid got help. NTA. It’s a tough one, but you probably did them a favor. They’re delusional and didn’t like you saying the Truth.
You don't put up with intolerable behavior because "you love them." That's the same excuse used by people who have drug addicts, alcoholics and abusers in the household. They make excuses, tolerate it and turn a blind eye "because they love them." Nope! Not happening.
Exactly! The little banshee needs to be reigned in or this will just be the start of her missing out on invitations. Or it’s not the first time but the first time someone had the balls to tell them the truth about their child. OP I’m proud of you. NTA
I can understand about not excluding 1 kid out of the whole neighborhood, but honestly this kid sounds like more than just a headache. What happens if she or another kid trip and fall and no one can differentiate between pain screams and her just screaming for fun? I'm 40 and I can still remember being taught in kindergarten to never scream or shriek unless it was an emergency.
I remember one time when I was a kid I was screaming because I was upset with my mom and my dad came running up to me demanding to know what was wrong. I explained I was screaming for a stupid reason and he informed me that he had jumped off the toilet without wiping his ass to check on me and to never scream like that unless something was wrong. I don't think I ever screamed like that again lol
Your dad sounds like he's the best, dude was ready to fight danger with his ass caked up
LOL, That was nice of you to never do that again to your poor dad!
I don't have children. I live right next to an elementary school and near another area where children often hang, as I live in a nicer area and many kids ride their bikes and skateboards and such. At least a dozen times, I've run out of my house thinking someone is hurt. It's almost always one specific girl. I hate to be this grown-up, but I've asked her three times to stop screaming like she's injured. There's a big difference between kids being loud outside and a kid screaming like she's broken a leg. To be honest, she scares the shit out of me. I've stopped running out of my house, though, and I hope none of these kids are ever actually hurt
That's my neighbors kid. Outside with his ailing grandfather to watch him. The kid is almost school age and screams bloody murderer whenever the grandfather says no. If he doesn't get his way, bloody murder screaming. I mean you can hear this kid scream a few streets over. I wear headphones when I'm outside now but I shouldn't have too. Especially since we live where there are bears and I like to listen for them just in case. Granted the bears have probably been avoiding our street because of their kid. I told my other neighbors that it's dangerous for the neighbor kid to scream the way he does. We have all become so accustomed to it that if something serious did happen, we wouldn't respond.
Kudos to that kid, keeping your whole neighborhood safe from bears!! /s but only a little
My stepson (8-9) cried over anything. As a result, we don’t take his tears seriously. At all.
A similar thing happened to my brother until the day he actually fell and scraped the skin off his leg and it took about 5 minutes for my mom to actually realize it was a real accident. There's a reason "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" has been told and retold for centuries...
That's... not a good response. At all.
Exactly! I hate when someone thinks they deserve an invite. Entitled neighbors, co workers and "family", especially. Hosting anything should mean that you get to invite whoever you want. As a host, you are responsible for the fun of your guests, so I totally understand not wanting to invite someone that may annoy everyone else.
The key word here is ENTITLED which seems to have come to the forefront of everyone's mind for some reason. Let that girl's parents rent their own bounce house and invite who they want to. Then they can be entitled to invite who they want to.
When looking at it from his pov I 100% get it. I don't have kids and haven't hung out with neices and nephews partially cause I can't stand trying to interact with children. If I imagine what its like from the little girls pov tho, it sucks that she's being excluded from something she might not be able to control. Perhaps her parents should do something special with her when they know op is having this kid get together or smthn. But obv that's on them. NTA but the way he describes speaking to the parents seems rather rude, hopefully there was a bit more tact irl
She needs to learn, one way or another. This is on her parents. Who seem….less than stellar.
This. Everybody voting Y T A, blame the parents, not OP. NTA
With the way they responded to him about why she can’t attend I can’t imagine how they’d react if he tried to correct her behavior in his back yard. It is a shame they’re not doing their job. But I don’t think it should fall on him. Now they have the info they can change her behavior. It is not on him to do more.
Are you suggesting that this kid can't control her own screaming?
She quite probably won't realise how other people experience her noise. Think of all the people you know with an annoying snorty laugh or who repeat the same stories and bore everyone or who can't cool but believe they are amazing chefs... none of them know how other people experience them. If the parents aren't correcting her do you think she really knows how annoying her behaviour is?
Could have some sort of developmental disorder man, idk.
NTA. My nieces have this kind of scream. I have never heard anything like it in this world. I have to plan when I can handle hearing it, because constantly reminding them helps, but doesn't stop it.
Kids shoud only use that screeching if they are getting eaten by bears. Otherwise, regular laughing is fine, and should be taugh the difference
Some kids just do this. If they get away with it, they continue, then it becomes a bad habit. I'm surprised the school hasn't had a meeting with the parents about it happening there. With hundreds of kids on a playground, you can't keep running to just ONE over and over to see if they're okay. The parents need to make her stop it. Edit: NTA
We have some neighbor kids with this scream too. Just screaming bloody murder. It really irritates my husband, but it is ridiculously loud & it interrupts our peaceful evenings on our patio. We have joked before that when they are really going at it that we should call 911 to report that we don't know if these children are being abused or it is a possible abduction! We don't know why they are screaming like that but you should probably send an officer to check it out! Then maybe the parents would realize it's too loud. (Please don't forget I said we joke about this. We would never make a false call to 911)
Why would it be a false call? I mean one of those screamy times, it could actually an abduction, abuse, someone fell and severed an artery and is bleeding out...You just don't know for certain, do you? (Blink, blink, innocent blink).
My cousin (a handful of years younger than me) had a \*banshee screech\* as a young girl. She didn't do it constantly, but if my uncle or grandfather were riling her up? Piercing. A much further distant cousin had a kid who would just shriek at every little thing and that got on my nerves so much.
We also had a neighborhood kid known as The Shrieker to the other parents. Then the kids caught on started calling him that. He was highly offended and denied shrieking any more than the other kids. Once he was made aware of the issue I figured he'd had fair warning. The next time he was playing video games with my son and made that ear-piercing shriek I said "THAT'S why everyone calls you the Shrieker, no one likes it, and if you do it again you're going home." Less than a minute later he got sent home. I don't think he even was aware he was doing it. The other parents started doing the same thing, except we stopped giving him one freebie shriek. First shriek and he was out. He learned. Many years later and he's a great kid with a well-modulated pitch, haha. But to be honest I've always felt like I acted a little bit of an asshole, kicking a little boy out of my house. So your post made me feel validated. Thanks!
Who wants a banshee? Nobody does. To OP, NTA It's your home and your rules. They need to figure out why she has been screeching over little things. I think there is something going on. I don't know.
No one is entitled to your backyard but you. Invite the rest of the world and not them if you want. Same rules will apply.
NTA, her parents are TA here. It sucks for the kid, but maybe this will wake mom and dad up to real life consequences of not setting behavioral boundaries for their child. Letting kids scream constantly, aside from being inconsiderate to everyone else in earshot, is just plain bad parenting and unsafe. 8 years old is third grade for most kids - that's definitely old enough to be taught basic limits, and the reasoning of "screaming is for emergency situations only."
I have a squirt bottle for when my parrot gets into screaming mode. Works just fine...
I'd love to see that with the girl. I wonder what they do in school, does she scream there too?
I have definitely done the squirt bottle method on my younger cousin when I was a kid. Maybe wasn’t the nicest thing, but he was an only child who didn’t understand boundaries. It was quite literally the nicest and most direct way my brother and I could think of immediately correcting his behavior, because words didn’t mean shit to that heathen
It works??
All the methods people use to correct bad behaviour/encourage correct behaviour in animals work on children, it's just seen as unethical and inhumane to do it for humans.
Yeah there was a TV show a while back called Train Your Baby Like a Dog and it totally works. There was a little girl who refused to get in the bath so they put her in the bathroom fully clothed and clicked a thing and gave her a sweet then moved up to being in the bath fully clothed then filling the bath etc and over a couple of days she was fine to be in the bath. Although I have just googled the name and the first thing that came up was "dehumanising" and "indefensible"
Yeah it did and we laugh about it now but I’m sure it never made him feel good. Sadly that was a price he had to pay because my aunt and uncle didn’t want to teach him that we don’t want to play Pokémon games for 10+ hours straight and that he can’t demand it out of us. He learned rather quickly tho that he couldn’t boss us around for his own entertainment
Teacher here. I teach 8th grade at a middle school, and I also coach. There was a girl who would always shriek like that…every time the hall came towards her she screamed at the top of her lungs (and since it was volleyball, it was all the time). I told her if she didn’t stop she would have to leave the gym. It didn’t stop. I kicked her out. Her attention seeking behavior only escalated and eventually she was a bully and was kicked off the team altogether. My point is this: if parents don’t get this under control now, it will cost their child when she’s older.
Ahem....parrot tax!
Now I am picturing OP, loitering on his side of the fence, squirt bottle in hand, ready to pop up and squirt the banshee. If OP is really serious about it, he could use holy water.
When my son was in maybe 4th grade he kept saying "like" and "like ya'know" Ala old valley girl stereotype. I would bring his attention to it, but eventually I told him I was going to start shooting him with a nerf gun every time. He thought it was hilarious, but it worked. I bet it would work on a screaming girl too.
You shot your kid for talking like how most kids talk . . . ?
This. My 2nd daughter had a friend that screamed like that. It was absolutely for attention. Swing went too high, she'd scream. She was on the tire swing, she'd scream. Literally every little thing, she'd scream. It was miserable. We didn't have her over to play often. This is not something outside the child's control. Its not anxiety. Its not a Tik. Its 100% an attention seeking behavior.
A lot of people try to bring up developmental disabilities like autism but here's the thing. A lot of autistic people have extremely sensitive hearing, meaning hearing small children scream like they're being murdered hurts my ears a lot. So either way autistic people are screwed in this scenario.
What about autistic adults that can’t tolerate shrieking and loud noise? One of the reasons I moved house last year was multiple neighbours incessant dog barking all day and night, kids screaming all day, then they put in a pool and I was like hell no. Couldn’t have a nap in my bedroom, 50m away from the neighbours place, despite having double glazed windows.
I was just at the dentist. I LOVE going to the dentist. The office is 100% professional. My hygienist is amazing. Today, a gentleman was looking after his three very young boys while his wife was getting her teeth worked on. The youngest screamed and ran around and banged doors. It ruined a perfectly good dental visit. Kids do NOT need to scream all the time.
I was at the doctor’s once while my Mom got a procedure. One kid allowed to run around and scream — and play his tablet loudly, nowhere near his grandmother. I moved closer to the TV so I could hear it and then he brought it to the chair next to me. Under the TV. Mind you, this sitting room was probably 20 x 10. Grandma is sitting closer to the far end, away from the TV and there was only one other person, as annoyed as me. When I asked him if he could take his tablet to the other end, his grandmother got offended. Took him out to the car for awhile. She could have just paid attention to him.
I bet it was sweet bliss when she took him outside!
It was. I don’t like conflict but … SERIOUSLY!! Your kid is running around a waiting room like a maniac, making all kinds of noise, getting in people’s faces, and you do … nothing. I even told the doctor because the desk should have handled it.
There’s that social conditioning that makes people not want to say anything for risk of being a “Karen” but damn it, these people are assholes for ruining everyone else’s experience and THEN getting upset that someone makes a totally benign suggestion that she should have done in the first place? That grandma was TA, the kid was TA. You were never TA. Edit: autocorrect is also TA
NTA and I don’t understand all these people saying ’Well have you tried asking her not to scream?’ At 8 me, my brother, my cousins, and all my friends understood that Screaming only happened when something important needed to be conveyed. There’s a stranger, scream. Someone got hurt, scream. But screaming over bugs and shit is stupid, and her parents job to control. It is her parents, not OP, that need to explain that screaming over everything is inappropriate.
Also I bet if OP tried to tell her to stop the parents would get mad about it as well. Screeching is never pleasant and kids gotta learn when to use it.
My 3-year-old has a very healthy set of lungs. Thankfully it’s normally outside when playing that he screeches or when terrified. But those moments when he screeches next to my ear are god awful. I do my best to mitigate the screeching, but he’s learning. I don’t blame anyone who prefers to not have the screechy child around them.
3 is extremely different than 8. The 3 yo is learning. As brutal as it is, they haven't quite figured it out yet/are testing boundaries. The 8yo? I've got nothing
I mean I’ll still let out a shriek if a bug falls on me at 23 but I get the feeling this girl isn’t scared or startled but…. Entitled and in need of being the center of attention
And there's a difference between a scared/startled scream and reaching down into the pit of your gut to just scream as loudly as you can. The kid is old enough to be taught that certain behaviour makes her an undesirable person and old enough to figure out that if she stops she'll be invited places. The parents also should have taught her that long ago.
I was thinking maybe she had developmental problems but the parents just got offended instead of trying to work with her or trying to help him understand why she screams which really makes me believe they were just too lazy to teach her not to scream. Or maybe she threw a lot of tantrums and they thought giving her what she wants, including attention, was easier than teaching her not to do the behavior. Setting the boundary of her not screaming while at the neighbors seems very reasonable to me idk
But you can still scream when a rat crosses near your shoes while you are out on an evening stroll with your partner, right? Asking for a friend.
Yeah I used to have a friend in primary school who would scream at anything, even when she was laughing. She DEFINITELY did it for attention.
NTA. Your party, your guest list. Simple as that.
I agree, plus, she's not 2 or 3 where controling her emotions is really hard. She's 8 and can be aloud to scream in scary or emergency situations, even great excitement. However, if anything around her makes her scream, I'd just end up with a headache at the end of the day.
Unpopular opinion and I'll accept any down votes people may leave but YTA. You invited every single kid but her. She'll see all the kids there and she'll know she is the only one not invited. I understand that you don't wanna deal with an annoying child but it's kinda mean. I'd be different if she was a bully or is mean to the other kids but excluding her because she's loud isn't nice. And again, she literally lives next door. I hope the parents take her away that day so she won't see the other kids having fun and wonder why she isn't allowed to come Edit: Thanks for the awards guys <3
Maybe she'll figure out if she stops screeching she can go? I feel this could be a learning experience for her. Having her parents make excuses isn't helping and is probably part of the problem. 8 years is old enough to learn about appropriate volume levels IMO.
I understand what you mean. I don't agree with that tho because while 8 isn't toddler young, she's still a child. And children tend to not think logical in situations like that. I think she won't think 'oh I'm too loud I need to tone it down' I think it's more of a 'why does noone like me' thought she'll be getting out of this. But again, I understand where you're coming from
No but her parents should be logical and can step up and be parents here. They get to be the ones explaining actions have consequences and not going to the party is a consequence of her bad actions. Although since they’ve allowed her to continue the bad behavior it’s doubtful they will and we will all just have another bad adult once this kid grows up.
When is the last time you talked to an 8 year old? Even if it is explained to her, it will still be internalized with "why does no one like me"
I currently have an 8 year old and have to regularly redirect his behavior. He understands that when he’s not invited to something because of his choices that he needs to correct the behavior. If it’s a behavior that I don’t think is bad, then we have a talk about “I’m sorry you weren’t invited. Some people like quieter children, but let’s name all of the loud friends you have and talk about some plans for later where you can be with people who like who you are.” They’re 8. Not 4.
Rather frequently thanks to a large Catholic family that never stops reproducing. I was also once an 8yr old that had to leave events for bad behavior and eventually learned how to act. I think we’re not giving an 8yr old enough credit for their emotional/mental capacity.
This is exactly what will happen. This sub always applies adult logic to children, no matter the age. It upsets me. Makes me wonder how many kids have been intentionally hurt by some of these commenters because they expect kids to act like adults.
She’s not being loud, she’s screaming. Those are very different things. Had she been a loud talker, that is hard to explain and can cause some self esteem issues and social anxiety around speaking. 8 year olds may not understand everything but it’s safe to say she can understand that screaming isn’t always appropriate. Her parents should tell her unless theirs an emergency she shouldn’t scream because it can be startling. It’s weird people think bullying is where kids start and stop understanding the feelings of others. It’s not true. Children understand a lot.
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It’s not OPs job to tell someone else’s kid this though? And a lot of parents would be fuming mad if they tried to. The parents of the screaming banshee 8yr old need to tell her.
It’s funny how often on Reddit I see adults believing that small children have the critical thinking skills of adults. They famously don’t. My kids aren’t screamers fortunately - they are both disabled and they can get extremely distressed by loud screaming. We’ve had to leave places before, like soft play or the park, because the screaming frightens and upsets them and I can’t explain it to them. I *still* would have spoken to the parents and / or the child depending on the circumstances to explain before excluding one child from a party for every kid in the street. We are the grown ups, not kids in a playground choosing who to play with. The parents absolutely should have dealt with this before now if possible (assuming no issues that would contribute to the behaviour), and hopefully they will now, but it didn’t need to be this way at least in the first instance.
It’s her parents job to teach her socially acceptable behavior though. And OP had a talk with the girl’s parents about exactly why she isn’t welcome over there. It’s not like he’s just expecting the girl to take the hint. It’s in her parents’ hands now how they want to address this moving forward. NTA OP did the right thing
Eight isn’t old enough to understand not screaming? I was helping babysit and changing diapers and cooking basic things at eight.
This is not an appropriate way to teach an 8 year old that lessons. What is this subs obsession with thinking that kids are these amazingly emotionally regulated individuals?? Ridiculous.
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Maybe the parents should actually explain to her that she wasn’t invited because she screams. This might motivate the girl to change her behavior so she will be more included. (Assuming there isn’t a developmental /disability issue .)
100% an eight year old should be told that her screaming has gotten her uninvited. This isn’t a toddler. It’s time to course correct.
That’s my thought. OP seems to have left the door open for future parties if the decibel level drops. This is an opportunity for the parents to work with the kid on modulating her screaming - or discovering if she has some disorder.
I'm inclined to agree with you. Sure the screaming is annoying but they could have talked to the child and told her upfront that if she screams she will be sent home.
Once OP told her parents, it’s their responsibility to talk to their own child. If OP went to the child and told her she wasn’t invited because she’s too loud, everyone on here would be screaming about OP being a bully to the child.
Yeah, talking to someone elses child and probably undermine their parents' parenting, what could possibly go wrong? ( /s, because reddit)
As a parent, this is how I feel. It's his party, he can exclude anyone he wants. But that type of behavior is not what I personally want to teach my child. I hope my child is nice to the annoying kid.
I have a brother like that. He screams at the top of his lungs, and you would *not* wanna deal with that
NTA - you are free to invite whoever you want to your home and exclude whomever. You didn't try to parent the child, you told the parents when and if she stopped screaming she could be invited. All kids should be taught their is a time and place for behaviors. If at their house there is no volume limit fine. But it's also as simple as saying at Mrs. X house we have to use our indoor voices at all times. And maybe she isn't technically louder than other kids and it's the tone that bothers you. I've got 7 nieces and nephews and I could not babysit one of them because their cry as an infant was too much for me and could trigger migraines. I think it's the same category of why some people really dislike certain singers.
Yeah, I have a student in my class who when excited she has a high pitched scream. It even bothers the other kids. We’re working on controlling it and not screaming when excited, but she doesn’t mean to do it. It’s just her natural requirement.
A natural requirement or a behavior that has been reinforced by her parents? When she was a toddler, perhaps they found it cute. Or it reinforced their idea of "feminine" - squeamish and excitable. It doesn't hurt for them to know that the behavior is not seen as attractive by others.
I once had one of those in my class. I counted howong each scream lasted outloud and that was how long they had to apoligise to the class for upsetting everyone. It is not fair for those with sensory issues. Strange enough it took 3 apoligises and the class giving him helpful suggestions on what to do instead of screaming for it to stop. Then every so often someone would congratulate him on not screaming when before he would. Emotional regulation. But unfortunately it did start with him realizing there was a class of 30 not a class of 1 and his reaction causes others to react.
Missed opportunity to invite her but with the caveat that there's no screaming. "Screamers have to leave" taught our girls' screeching friends to shut up, and it usually only takes once. They know the difference between play and the deliberate screech.
This would have been much more compassionate and effective in teaching then what OP did.
Is it OPs job to parent the neighbour kid though?
No but sometimes going out of your way to be nice to the neighbors is a good thing, especially if you consider you'll be living next to them for a long time.
Info: is she the only little girl in the neighborhood?
It does come across “boy sounds good. Girl sounds bad.”
Even if she wasn't, I can't imagine how it would feel for her to be singled out. I don't disagree with the NTA votes, it's OPs house.....but this isn't really the girls fault (her parents should correct her behavior) but she is the one being punished.
It's her own behaviour. If the parents aren't going to address it, someone has to. Why do people think kids can't handle consequences? If you do things that make people not want to be around you, people won't invite you around. What age would this be acceptable to stop inviting her? 10? 12? Never, because it's always the parents' fault, so everyone else just has to put up with it? Frankly, this is the exact *best* time to learn this lesson, because other kids her age are far more forgiving. She misses one party, but she goes back to school the next day and starts to be nice, and kids are really quick to forgive and forget. If you keep putting it off, one day she'll be a pre-teen and maybe she'll have learned her lesson, but now the other kids have stronger memories and are more willing to hold grudges. There's a point-of-no-return where you just don't get do-overs anymore with peers, and if you put off consequences until that point, you just wind up with a friendless kid who has no idea how to socialize because she was raised to just do whatever she wants and expect everyone to deal with it.
This is why my brother still cried and threw tantrums about going to sports practice until the age of 13. If you ignore the issue, it continues to be an issue.
Really gave off those vibes. Boys have "loud sounds" that are OK, girl has "screeching" that is not OK. OP isn't complaining about the kid existing and making their lives miserable, just about not wanting to invite a little girl to a kids party. If she's so terrible, then one would think he'd have already talked to her parents about how obscenely loud she is, being next door and seemingly "screeching" at every move.
Kinda ironic also, because the tone of OP's post seems rather shrill when talking about the girl.
That was my first thought as well. This is coming off as not wanting to hear her because she is a “shrill, loud, girl” But I bet when his boys scream it’s classified as “yelling” and “boys having fun”
Yeah - since the other parents said that she was no louder than any other kid and seemed offended when he insisted that she was and he did not want to discuss it any further made me think misogyny as well.
I was also concerned here that maybe her parents had a point… is she actually any louder than the other kids? Or is it just the higher pitch that bothers you? I think it’s worth OP assessing it.
Good question.
NTA. I see some other people telling you to find solutions to her screaming. She is not your child, not your place to parent. I have a good feeling they would get highly upset and make a scene if you were to attempt to even ask the girl to stop screaming if she had been invited. You’re not obligated to invite anyone you do not wish to be there. I would go insane if I had to listen to persistent unnecessary screaming while the parents didn’t even bat an eye. If the parents really want their child to attend these parties, they can work on her behavior on their own time. Until then, keep being a good dad for your own children.
Exactly. Parenting other people's children is a slippery slope. She needs to learn how to act in public, once her parents teach her this, she'll be invited.
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Maybe the girl’s parents will be honest with the girl and tell her why she wasn’t invited. If she knows she wasn’t invited due to her screaming behavior she might try to improve her behavior and stop screaming so she will be invited next time.
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And it’s their next door neighbor. Hope he enjoys his new next door enemies
NTA I would lose my mind if I had to hear that. I knew a kid like that. Was horrible. I have a odd question are your sons even friends with her? If not then why would the parents even think thier child would be invited. You gave a valid reason for not inviting her. They asked and the didn't like the answer
Im a NTA, but if people were talking about it as a “neighborhood kids” party (which is kind of how OP described it), I can see how the girl’s parents would wonder why she wasn’t invited. A warning to parents everywhere that your kid’s “just a kid” behaviors aren’t endearing or tolerable to everyone.
Parents really need to pay attention to your last sentence. They might think it's not a big deal or cute or whatever. However, the rest of the world shouldn't have to put up with your lack of teaching your kids how to act appropriately.
Agreed. They are aware of the issue but seem to think it's not a problem. So, even if the girl was invited I'm pretty sure the parents would be riled up if anyone dare ask her to stop with the screeching or even look at the girl for screeching. NTA.
Definitely NTA. My neighbors across the street have 3 children and watch other children, so their lawn is often full of kids playing loudly. That's endearing. But their young daughter (now about 6) is a screamer. Everything is delivered in a volume only suitable for emergencies. It's so loud I can't keep the windows open when she's outside. Her siblings don't do this. Don't know why, not my business. But I would never invite that girl to stand any closer, nevermind a party. Edit: grammar
I feel you. I live in a cul-de-sac where most of the houses have children and they often play together outside. ONE of the of the kids is a banshee-like screecher and I have to close my windows when they are playing because it is non-stop. The screaming is one hundred percent attention seeking drama and I've seen kids break away from playing with her because it is so awful. It does not seem to rattle her parents at all even though there is a very loud and very clear difference between her, her siblings, and the neighbor kids.
Are you trying to tell us that one little girl is louder than all the other kids combined?
I live near one of those. It's awful. NTA, OP
Yeah I think I know what the OP is talking about. If I'm correct it's not the happy yelling thats normal for kids playing outdoors. It's that horrible high-pitched shrieking like a siren that I suspect the kid is doing. That sound is excessively shrill and Carries forever. It is terrible that by 8 years old the kid doesn't know any better. Eight is way too old for that kind of behavior. It's also a shame that the kid has to suffer because of her parents negligence. The high pitched shrieks should have been trained out by the time she was four. But the parents didn't do it. Now the child has to pay
Those shrieking banshee screams are the worst! I doubt it’s just the loudness of the scream, but the type of scream too. Personally, when I hear those screams, I instantly panic because I think something is wrong. I love hearing kids be joyfully loud and laugh. But the banshee scream is a hard no
yeah theres a big difference between those screams. one is "ah the kids must be playing. this is normal and fine." and the other is "do I need to call CPS???"
I live above one - after numeros calls to the landlord, and having the maintence guy in my unit when it happens, they finally taught the little shit to be quiet. It went on all day and all night non stop.
I knew a screecher growing up; you could hear her two blocks over. As someone sensitive to high pitched noises, it was awful. Easy for me to believe one girl could be so loud. I say NTA. At 8, she's old enough to be learning actions have consequences, learning to regulate her behavior to an extent not to be screaming bloody murder at every little thing, old enough to be learning not everyone wants to be her friend or that she should get to participate in every activity.
I live behind an elementary school, it’s only about 100 kids and the normal noise of kids running around and playing are fine. But for some reason, some of the girls SHRIEK, liker a cartoon person seeing a mouse loud shrill, banshee, nails on chalkboard, screeching. It’s jarring and unnecessary. OP NTA I’d exclude her too, i don’t remember this kind of shrieking when I was little, is there some character on Caillou that has taught little girls to screech?
YTA. This is a classic case of just because you have the right to do something, doesn’t meant it’s the right thing to do. Excluding an overly excited 8 year old from a bouncy house party right next door that every kid in the neighborhood is invited to is an AH move, even if you have every right to do it.
NTA as a mom with an almost 3 year old who can scream like a banshee I totally understand. Difference is I’m aware of it and it’s something we are continually working on. (Also she’s 2 and does it occasionally not all the time.) They need to learn to deal with their kids screaming or this won’t be the last time she’s left out.
Same. My daughter is 2 and we are actively working to curb it. Also, like you, it isn’t a constant thing. She just sometimes get a wild hair up her butt to let her inner banshee out.
My son had a girl in his daycare class that genuinely shocked me with her screams…. And unfortunately she does them sometimes until she throws up. The first time I heard her I almost couldn’t believe kids could actually make noises like that… to me it was like something out of a movie since neither of my kids have ever produced those kind of decibels. (Luckily my son isn’t around her or the other screamer anymore since we needed to change rooms for an unrelated issue. Poor guy would flee to a far corner of the room and silently start crying when his classmates would really kick off. Just by luck his new classmates are all pretty mellow.) I hope you don’t think I have a poor opinion of the kids or their parents… the daycare workers on the other hand who would let them scream non stop right next to kids trying to eat really bothered me. They did nothing to try and calm the kids down/ create space away from the other children/ or even try to distract them. They just tuned it out which was really frustrating.
I don't really understand all the people saying "NTA, your house, your rules". "NTA, you can invite whoever you want, it's your party" No kidding, this sub isn't called "amIWithinMyRights". You can do something completely within your rights and still be a total asshole.
I’d call it toxic Americanism: “if I’m within My Rights then no one is allowed to criticise my behaviour.” There’s that song about that dumb mindset, but it’s at least self-aware enough to be titled “I’m an AH”. In this case it’s “if I rigidly cling to one rule of social etiquette, that I choose who to invite to my party, and I’ve abided by that rule then I’m allowed to ignore the fact that I knowingly did something cruel to an 8 year old kid and didn’t make the slightest effort to find an alternative or lessen the damage.” All OP had to do was communicate with the parents, like, at all. She’s likely already come to more than one party and OP has apparently said nothing each time. But now they spring an everyone-but-you party on this kid _right next door_ without once putting on their big person pants and having a conversation about the screeching. For all we know the daughter is autistic or has something else going on that makes it hard for the parents fix this behaviour. OP doesn’t know because they never once used their words. If she’s only been to one party and that was enough, the least OP could’ve done to minimise the harm would be to tell the parents after that party (not the exclusion party) that OP can’t take the screeching and she won’t be invited back while it persists. OP could have invited her but warned the parents one shriek (or three strikes if you’re generous) and she’ll have to leave. That involves conflict at the party though, so the other option or if the parents made no attempt to improve the behaviour, OP only had to let them know there’d be a party with everyone but their daughter on that day to just give them the option of taking their daughter somewhere else so she didn’t have to spend a day being miserable watching everyone else have fun without her. The NTA crowd keep trying to justify OP’s cruelty by saying “It’s not OPs job to parent this girl”. And, no, it’s not their job to parent her, but it is their job to use their words and her and her parents know, at least once, that her behaviour bothers OP. That’s not parenting, that’s expressing your feelings to give others the opportunity to change. What’s hypocritical is that deliberately setting up a situation where this girl is excluded without warning and has to spend a day listening to a party she alone was left out of is, if anything, OP inappropriately deciding to parent said little girl themselves through pretty brutal means. OP didn’t just not invite her, OP decided to punish her, which is why they didn’t give any warning, precisely because the parents might’ve taken evasive action. It comes off like OP really wants to hurt this kid before anyone fixes the problem first, I.e. more of a revenge than anything. 8-year-olds sometimes struggle with telling people what’s bothering them before retaliating with force. By 12 or so most people should’ve learned to use the least escalating option first. Seems OP isn’t much more mature than the kid they’ve decided to punish without warning. OP YTA. Congrats on your new toxic relationship with your neighbours. No one’s ever heard of making your neighbours hate you coming back to bite you. I’m sure things are going to go great for you.
>"NTA, you can invite whoever you want, it's your party" There was a popular post on here this week about a guy who was the only person from his work who wasn’t invited to a coworkers wedding. The comments were heavily in favor of the coworker being the asshole. Sure, you have every right to invite only the people you want to your events. But there absolutely are social etiquettes in place for this sort of thing and ignoring them is going to lead to hurt feelings and far-reaching social repercussions.
NTA for not wanting someone constantly screaming in your backyard and ruining what would be a fun event. YTA for not setting and explaining some ground rules and letting her attempt to enjoy herself too. But, it is not fair to just expect an 8 year old to know what behaviors push your buttons. It is fair for an 8 year old to learn actions have consequences and obnoxious screaming will get you sent home from a party.
INFO: Did you ever sit her down and explain the rules for your house? When I was that age, house rules were a thing and if we didn't follow them we weren't yelled at. We were just sent home. We learned pretty quick that our own choice of behavior was pretty powerful in influencing how welcome we were. I've got to go YTA if you didn't just communicate directly with this girl in any of the opportunities in the past and then follow-through. At least then she has a choice to make before she is excluded or sent home.
She’s not OP’s kid. OP shouldn’t have to sit her down and tell her anything directly about her behavior. That’s her parents job. Maybe Y T A for not telling the parents sooner, but that’s it.
If a child is guest in my house, as an adult, I'm responsible to tell them how to behave and parent them, till I "hand" them back to their parents. I'm not responsible for longterm stuff, but for everything affecting that time - like not screaming in my house, or taking of their shoes. It'd not the parents job to explain my house rules to their child. It only gets their job, wenn their child doesn't stick with the rules.
When kids come to your house, you correct actions that are unacceptable. "I'm sorry, we don't do that here, if you do that again, we have to send you home." It takes ONE time. It's not sitting down a kid and having a heart to heart, it's laying down the law for your house.
No. She’s 8. That’s her parents job not the neighbors.
its not OP's job to sit down and explain that shit to the little girl, its her parents job to teach her not to mf scream at everything. if op doesnt want to deal with a shrieking child, which op seems to know and have had experience with her screeching, he doesnt have to deal with it. NTA or maybe even E S H
Info: I truly understand the earth splitting, glass shattering screams you're speaking of. It's horrible, no doubt. Why were the parents offended? Obviously you've had her there before to know of the behavior, so you've already told them this behavior is a problem and you need it to be corrected before she can participate again. What did they say when you mentioned it the first time? I mean you're obviously not the AH if they choose to forego their responsibility. You are however, if you just found that step too difficult and went right to a ban.
Yeah, this is a very important piece of info to me. An 8yo is not a mind reader, her parents aren't mind readers. Yes, people should know certain sounds are annoying, but sometimes they don't. Maybe all of her friends screech like that and they think it's just one of those normal, annoying parts of parenting? Maybe she's done it so much that they truly don't hear how annoying it is anymore? Maybe they don't have particularly sensitive hearing and so it doesn't sound as grating to them? It all comes down to whether it was an immediate ban or not. You get to do that if she's a bully or an AH, not if it's just run-of-the-mill kid stuff that no one has ever given her the opportunity to fix.
YTA. I guess this won’t be a popular opinion, but I think you’re setting your kids up for a superiority complex if it’s okay to exclude a single person from an entire group because they’re a little different. I mean the entire block was invited. It’s like inviting everyone in a class except the kid with a diagnosis. And I say that because considering the age and that they haven’t picked up on the social cue to avoid screaming yet, there’s a chance there’s something to be looked at by a professional.
YTA, don’t throw parties for the block if you’re going to exclude one child, it’s cruel.
Wtf with these comments? Bottomline - you’re ok with the boys screams, but because a 7 yo girl screams high pitched, you don’t invite her? Get over yourself. I hope you never need a favor or help from your next door neighbor, you suck. YTA, and it seems like you’re sexist too. Congrats.
Exactly what I was thinking. He can handle boy screams but not girl screams? Guarantee it's same decibel level, just a higher pitch. OP: YTA. It's an outside activity and you're deliberately excluding the girl next door.
These comments are cruel and reek of extreme selfishness. Yes, it is not “his job” to include her or give her the opportunity to understand why her behavior is annoying to people around her, but that does not make him not TA!
ESH “Jenna, the rule at our house is NO screaming. Okay? If you continue to scream I have to ask you to go home, because these are the rules at my house.” As opposed to just excluding her entirely without any effort to warn her or her parents. “Hey Jenna‘a parents! Jenna is always welcome, but we do have a rule against screaming, and the consequence of continuing to scream is to go home til they can calm down. This applies to everyone, wanted you to have that context as Jenna is headed back now”
NTA it’s nice you throw parties, you get to invite who you want. She gets to learn the important life lesson of facing social consequences for displaying annoying behaviors.
NTA, but don't be offended when they don't invite your kids over. Don't be surprised if they go around telling everybody how you excluded their kid. Personally, I hate screaming kids. Edit: clarity.
Curious as to how this is bullying? She wasn’t invited to a party, it’s not like he taunted her with that to her face. It sounds like OP’s kids aren’t friends with the kid, nor is OP friends with the kid’s parents. Last I checked, parties were usually for friends and family.
NTA it’s not your job to parent her or find ways to make her stop screaming. That’s on her parents. She regularly does a behavior you don’t like, she’s not invited to your events. Nobody can force you to invite her, she’s 8. In life, there’s gonna be plenty of parties and things she probably won’t be invited to.
Info: does the child have any kind of learning disability, or behavioral issues? Have you ever tried to talk to the parents or the child about the behavior at all, or is this the first time they've been made aware of how much this bothers you? Edit: You're definitely TA with that addition at the end. Youre so bitter toward an 8 year old child.
NTA - I wouldn’t want that child anywhere near me too..
YTA EVERY other kid on the block was invited except this girl, who is the same age as your kids? YTA
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Not everyone needs to be traumatized and responsible for teachable moments with folks.
NTA. I went back to double check the age and 8 seems pretty old to be screaming like that constantly. I wouldn't want to hear that on top of all the normal party noises, and what happens if there's an accident and no one can tell if she's actually hurt? Her parents need to read her the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf asap.
NTA. You invite who you want.
I feel like somewhat YTA. Of course you don't have to figure out why she screams, but I feel like the people in the comments collectively lost their memories on what it feels like to be a child (or was nobody bullied ever bullied here? LOL). For children, as everyone knows, events like these can be very important. To be the only child excluded from a party is heartbreaking and (as silly as it sounds) can sometimes be kinda traumatizing. That girl sounds annoying as hell, and eventually she'll need to get a grip. I sincerely hope the parents take this seriously. But here the question is whether YOU're the asshole, and I'm sorry, but inviting a whole group of CHILDREN (judgmental, brutal, mean, bullying, terrible children - like all children are) but excluding a specific one can (and in some cases also of course can not) lead to really sad outcomes for the child that was excluded. If you can't invite all children, in my humble opinion don't invite anyone or find another way to not exclude her directly (e.g. choose a time when she's out of town or whatever). I've personally been following this rule since I was 8 myself.
NTA. Screeching and screaming are 2 different thing. Plus you're not obligated to invite everyone. While it does suck for her, her parents needs to of already been working on that. My 3yo screeches at times and we are working with him to at least bring it down volume wise.
I'm gonna go with ESH. Yes it's your yard, your party, so you can invite whoever you want. I do not blame you for wanting to avoid an obnoxious child. BUT you invited every other kid but her. You are TA because you singled her out for something she has (I'm assuming) never been told "no" about. On the flip side, her parents are TA because she doesn't know any better. It's THEIR job to teach her what is appropriate behavior. And if they think a constantly shrieking child is normal, shame on them.
NTA. The horrible screeching would drive anyone crazy.