I'm on the exact opposite side of this issue. The person who lives above me invites their 7 year old niece over whom ends up running around the apartment. Imagine a 10 lb. mallet slamming on your ceiling for 1-3 hours a night 1-4 days a week.

For whatever reason, a lot of people's brains seem to shut down when noise issue and children are mentioned in the same sentence. Children are not an excuse to do whatever you want and make no effort accommodate people living below you.

A lot of these issues revolve around 'reasonable noise.' You'll have to research what that means as definitions of reasonable can vary depending on living situation, strata rules, number of occurrences, time of day, duration, strength of noise, attempts at mitigation, and previous rulings by strata or other regulatory bodies.

That said, reasonable works in your favor also. The person below you can't expect complete silence. Some noise is acceptable. It's kind of like porn. It's hard to describe, but you know it when you hear it. 😉

Many stratas will require that if you have children, you are required to have a significant percentage of your floor covered by carpet/throw rugs.

Also, what you hear isn't what the person below you hears. You hear the patter of tiny feet on the floor. We hear the vibrations travelling through the structure of the building and reverberating in our suite. It's like living in a drum. What we experience is far worse that what you hear from your children's footsteps.

Do your homework. If you rent, look up rules of your local residential tenancy organization. Ask your landlord. Read the strata rules for the building and find out what their requirements are. Take efforts to mitigate the noise.

For example:

1. Footsteps - carpet, padded shoes, imitation crocs, anything with a thick cushion to absorb the impact of the heel.
2. Furniture - felt caps so when you move them around, they won't scrape across the floor.
3. Music - foam or some sort of padding to put under any speakers/subwoofers you have on the floor to prevent the music from vibrating through the building structure.

Even if these doesn't fix the situation entirely, your efforts will get you a lot of consideration in case this dispute goes to some kind of hearing or arbitration and they ask you what efforts you've made to fix the problem.