My downstairs neighbors are making my life hell

I just need to rant about it, because as far as I know I can’t do squat about the situation right now.

I’ve recently moved into a new apartment with my family (two parents and an almost 3yo toddler). Our downstairs neighbor visited us sometime mid-December to complain about our child “running around all day and stomping like an elephant” for the past six months (we moved in November!) waking his kids and him at 6am (my child usually sleeps till around 7:30-8am on the weekends and 7am on weekdays) and after 9pm (our bedtime routine starts around 7-7:30pm and after 8pm we don’t move from our bedroom, reading or talking, but definitely no running around). He was very rude under the guise of being an upset neighbor. Fine. I’ve listened to his complaints, said that we’ll try to fix the problem, because I do admit my child does run around during the day. So we’ve started with ordering slippers and trying to get our child to accept them, we’ve tried our absolute best to keep her in bed as long as we could, to carry her around the house, so she wouldn’t try to run. Unfortunately, he came again, this time half naked and threatening to call the owner, building administration and police on us, shouting that maybe we should keep our child in a cage on the balcony so he could sleep. After maybe 20min my husband decided to pay them a visit in their apartment, which gave them a taste of their own medicine. My husband is, thankfully, a very polite person and he hates conflict, so the conversation ended with a deal that the guy would message us if anything bothered him again so we could find out if a) it’s really us and b) what exactly it is that makes him bother us. To add to that - we’ve bought a new, thicker carpet for our child’s room (because apparently her playing in her own room is a problem as well), we’ve forced the slippers on her and moved the old carpet to the hall. Up until today the guy didn’t show up, didn’t message us but it still left a bad taste. I’ve noticed I’ve been stressed more since it all started, even got some minor anxiety episodes. I’ve been nagging my child to be quiet, not to run, to the point where she started walking on tippy toes which is not good for a still developing toddler. And then today! Today the guy decided to message us that we’ve been loud for the past couple days, especially after 9pm (bullsh*t!) and that our child was running in the morning again (slippers were on and it was 8:30 for gods sake!), that we have to reconsider our parenting skills, that’s its not normal for a child to be running around so much and then he threatened us again that if we don’t do something about it and QUICKLY then he would have no choice but to seek other ways of taking action (suggesting the police I presume). I just cannot believe this… I have no clue what do to about it other than live my life but he is ruining said life at the moment. I do not feel safe and it’s taking a toll on my family life.

Ugh. Thanks for reading my rant 😅

Edit: Wow, I did not expect to get so many kind responses - thank you, it really does help to know I’m not alone in thinking the dude is unhinged.

About our living situation - we don’t live in the US, so we don’t have a building landlord and it’s not easy to report him for harassment, not just yet anyhow. It would be a long and costly thing. The guy owns his apartment and we’re renting ours, which is probably why he thinks he’s the king of the building. We did bring this up with the owner and will be having another conversation about it as soon as he comes back to town. As renters we don’t have much say with the administration, so we will document our side and give our complaint to them through the owner. As far as we know, when the owner still lived here he also had a couple of visits from the guy and told him to get lost, basically. Not owning the apartment and not wanting to be problematic tenants is probably why we tried to find a compromise here and made any changes in our lifestyle. Also, unfortunately, I am a highly anxious person, so even though I KNOW I should just live my life and not care about what the as*hole says and does, it’s not easy. I am trying though.