We had the same problem as DY. Our neighbors downstairs were constantly complaining about the noise. We had 2 kids then–a baby and a 2-year-old–and we had to make sure they never threw any toys, always took their shoes off in the house, never scraped any chairs, etc. etc. It was not a healthy way to live. At one point, we were out of town for 2 weeks and they came to complain to a different neighbor with whom we were close about how we always make noise. When the neighbor told them we were away, they suddenly lost their tongues. Eventually we moved out to a ground floor apartment where our kid can build with wooden blocks without worrying about them falling down, jump, bounce balls, etc. Some time after we moved out, our former downstairs neighbor (the one who had always complained) met me in the street one day and said that she has to ask for mechila. She claimed that she was suddenly having a lot of tzaros so she made a cheshbon hanefesh to see what she might have done to deserve this, and she came up with the realization that they had been very unreasonable with us. She said that her husband had been working nights and sleeping during the day and that that’s why she was constantly asking us to be quiet. Now that things were going bad for her, she wanted to make sure that we were mochel. It wasn’t easy but I told her that we were.
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