Anonymous wrote:There is no screaming or yelling inside the house. Screaming is reserved for emergencies, like a fire or gushing blood. If you want to yell, get permission to go outside.
NP. I totally agree with these rules. I also know that they are not wholly enforceable all the time with younger children, who are still learning to control their voices and volume, and to whom "emergency" isn't always as clear a concept as it is to you, me, or kids with a few more years under their belts. Of course this is a time when kids are having to learn to think more about the noise they make indoors, but sometimes adults just need to have some technical help with the noise.
To OP: If the weight of serious noise-cancelling headphones would bother you (I have a hard time wearing that type of headphone for long), you can get soft silicone earplugs online or from a drugstore. You can mold them with your fingers to fit into your ear and they are less prone to popping out than foam earplugs, for me at least. Not a perfect solution as I don't love earplugs either, but they dampen noise enough so that a sudden "forgot the rules" yell doesn't sound nearly as abrupt.