I’m after a bit of advice on a situation that has been going on for some time but want it to stop.
A neighbour over the road is constantly gesturing at my children (11 & 9) when they are playing in the 11 year old’s room, or playing on the windowsill in that room. The gestures involve shaking her fist, twirling her finger around next to her head in a ‘crazy’ gesture, and sometimes waves things in her hands at them - they have said it’s a knife but I’ve never seen that myself. She either stands at a side door on her property or starts coming down the side path towards the gate at the front of their property.
The lady is in her 60s, at a guess. She lives with either her husband or son, and several grown up grandchildren. We don’t know them at all, we keep ourselves to ourselves. We’re good neighbours - we’re quiet, only park on our drive, work long hours all week so are often not here, and have never fallen out with anyone nearby, the kids don’t play out in the street here as they tend to go to friends houses or have friends here. To be honest we’re pretty boring - no gatherings or anything noisy ever, no noisy animals etc. Whereas other neighbours have yappy dogs, loud gatherings, loud car exhausts and as far as I know (but then again how would I know) they don’t fall foul of this woman. I’ve asked another neighbour if there are any issues in terms of dementia or anything that could be causing this, and this other neighbour said she’s harmless and just doesn’t like going out. For whatever reason she clearly just doesn’t like us. We’ve lived here almost 10 years and they were there before us. It might not be relevant but we are mortgaged and they are social housing, it’s quite a mix of the 2 along both sides of the road.
She’s done the gestures when we’ve been getting in the car before and I’ve called out ‘no thank you’ (I know, it’s all I could think of at the time!) and told her if she continues to threaten or intimidate my children I will call the police.
The thing is I just don’t feel it is a police matter? In the last lockdown she came to our door while I was working, and she asked DH to keep the children from annoying her (to my knowledge they don’t do anything and we’ve had serious words with them not to aggravate the situation). He said he would stop them from playing at the window on the condition that she has to stop what she’s doing. When I got home, I disagreed with this - I don’t want to restrict what mine can / can’t do in their rooms as genuinely they’re just kids playing. They’re not overly noisy, they can be silly but within reason - I get them to separate or calm down if things get too silly. But she’s over the road and wouldn’t really hear it anyway.
They ignore her when she does the gesturing. The FLO at the kids’ primary school raised it with me before as one of them had mentioned it to her and I told her how it is and that there’s no actual threat and we’re monitoring it. But obviously it is bothering them at some level if they’re mentioning it at school.
The gesturing is regular - it’s as though she’s watching and waiting for them to be at their windows. Our house is an odd layout and 3 of our bedrooms face towards the front, the lounge etc face towards the back so really we as adults don’t see out front much because I would mostly be in the lounge, kitchen or my own bedroom.
I just don’t know where to go from here - I thought about writing a letter but I’m just really concerned about creating a much bigger situation. I’m not confrontational and hate the idea of going over there to speak with them. I realise this doesn’t leave many options, of course I would do the letter or go over if I had to. I don’t really want to restrict where the children play, or make them have their curtains closed. Obviously if I ever see her wave a knife at them I will call the police, but all I’ve ever seen myself is the fist waving and finger twirling.
I’d really appreciate any advice. Sorry for the length of the post, I was hoping to avoid any drip feeding!