to not stop my DC's playing in the garden because it upsets someones dog?

[ozzysocks]

I have 3DC, DS1 is 7, DS2 is 4 and DD is 8 weeks. We are lucky enough to have an 80ft garden at the end of which we have a trampoline and climbing frame. This easter hols we have been out at parks etc most of the week but came home this afternoon at 2pm with my SIL and her 3 DCs aged 4,3 and 7 months. They all played in the garden until 4pm when we let the older ones watch a film inside. At 5.30 a man came to the door and talked to SIL while I was BFing DD upstairs, I could hear he was annoyed about something, so I stopped and went to the door.
I asked how I could help as I lived here not SIL, after angrily muttering about having to repeat himself he told me he wanted to complain about the children's noise! He arrived home from to find his wife very upset. Apparently the children screamed all afternoon (they didn't, there was a couple of tantrums which were resolved within 5 mins and a water fight at one point with some shouting). Apparently this noise disturbs their dog and makes it bark which in turn upset the wife???
I explained we had visitors today and he said well its happened before. I guess we do sometimes have BBQ's with friends and their kids, but never going on too late. I said well they are young children and I didn't think there was any problem with playing in their own garden. I also pointed its not our fault that they have a neurotic dog and also mentioned that there are lots of children in the surrounding gardens at which point he said "yes, you are not the only people I've spoken to". My SIL said she didn't think they were being too loud, he replied "yes well maybe you are used to the noise but our children have grown up and left home" I was polite to him and said If the boys screamed incessantly (not likely to happen!) then of course I would tell them to be stop, but explained that I would not be able to or want to stop my children enjoying themselves in their own garden. My boys are always in bed by 7.30 and are polite well behaved kids who just like to be boisterous and have fun in their own space!
AIBU? What should I have said? Time for I think

He sounds a bit nuts but then again how big is his garden?

Does he have the luxury of an 80ft garden? If he has a much smaller garden then he has no choice where he sits in it and thereofre no chance to avoid the noise.

I would move the play equipment closer to your house and away from the bottom of the garden. See how the noise is then.

I'm not overly concerned about the dog! - but perhaps your children are making a lot of noise? I know I am very good at screening out the noise my dc make - I've learnt over the years to 'filter' it and it doesn't register my consciousness unless they make a noise associated with pain or distress (then my radar switches back on)...the point being that they could be quite noisy and I wouldn't necessarily notice....other people would notice however

Was at a friends house yesterday - she lives cheek by jowl with neighbours on a housing estate and kept shushing her dc and my dc as they played in the garden because she was concerned about the impact on the neighbours. I think she was right to do so

I hope your children enjoyed themselves OP? Don't worry about the grumpy old git old man and his dog. If the dog misbehaved his owner should have taken him indoors

Miserable old git. Either his wife or his dog need to get some ear phones! - or dog training!

2 hours for one afternoon is nothing. I hope this doesn't affect you letting the kids play outside or having people around!!

It has been like a school playground around here over the holidays and I can't say I'm too upset at the thought that most of them will be at school for 3 days next week . I love to hear the kids play, I don't mind the giggling, the shouting, the ball repeatedly hitting the fence, the kids over the back bouncing higher and higher on their trampoline trying to see into the house, I don't mind getting splashed or inadvertantly hit by the waterguns. I don't mind the bairn over the back who plays the flute practising (she plays quite well) but it would be lovely if she would learn a different tune to the two she knows well but if Little Miss 8 Years Old (no SN) spends the day screaming again tomorrow I will not be responsible for my actions!! She just stands there and screams... her parents just ignore it. Would it be terrible to offer to pay for her to attend a 6 week summer camp??

I don't mind playing noise, but I think parents should stop kids screaming (and I don't mean shouting, I mean screaming!).

He sounds mad and VU. he should also try living next door to some old neighbours of mine. Three DDs under 8 and in the summer all you could hear was the mother screaming at the eldest. She was a lovely girl, and I used to have them all play over at my house so I didn't have to hear her screaming that her DD1 was fat and stupid [busad]

Sometimes I wonder where tolerance went.

It is 12:30pm here.

I am sitting on my back deck, there are kids in each neighbour's back garden. They are all screeching and yelling and generally being kids. The neighbours across the back are having a BBQ/Party.

And DS1 has just been invited next door for a swim because their pool is solar heated (jealous). This house is owned by an older couple whose kids have also left home but whose grandkids are the same age as DS1.

The noise level is immense. But it is a glorious autumn day here and anybody complaining about the noise would be sent packing.

I do wonder about the trampoline at the end of an 80ft garden though. Presumably you have put it so far away because of the noise, but is it a lot closer to their house than yours? That is a bit cheeky I think. Move the tramp up closer to your place.

Sod the dog though.

We live in a flat with a tiny piece of grass at the back of the building.
There are probably 6 kids under 6 who play together which includes ear splitting shrieking in the afternoons & evenings for hours at a time. We have to close all windows & turn the tv up v loud to drown out the noise.
That seems selfish to me at times,but what can you do??
The parents have parties which have the bass booming so much it shakes our
furniture,that I'm not so reasonable about! They have zero thought about how their noise affects others.
So,I think he was never going to get anywhere complaining about children being noisy,but sometimes people forget about their neighbours enjoyment of their gardens.

Chatting with DH whose mum is retired, uptight and has precious dogs.. he reckons her dogs would not bark, they have been trained not to bark at "ordinary" and "background" noises. Lots of children shrieking normal in OP's area, so it is ordinary background noise.

I suggest getting the dog's voicebox removed, if it is untrainable. I had neighbours who did this 25 years ago, better than their animal being labeled a nuisance.

That's dreadful - removing a dog's inability to communicate. Really

Obv. I meant a dog's 'ability'

lljkk - Yeah right - get the dogs voice box removed because its owners are stupid/lazy - good idea FFS I would hope a vets wouldn't even do it these days. When I was a child there was a dog over the back of my friends house who had this done to him, it broke my heart every single time it tried to bark and all you would hear was this pittiful noise... it's inhumane. Would you do this to your kids? Would your husband do this to you?

Oh dear @voice box removal. I can see this thread taking a very different turn now.

I get annoyed with my neighbours sometimes but it passes. Its all give and take really. Luckily none of them are persistantly annoying. The family two doors down pissed me off no end when they had a massive bonfire on a really hot day last week and we had to shut all the doors and windows. But the dont do it every day.
The little girls next door are always shouting my DS2's name to get him to look over the fence but its a small annoyance (except when their mother told him off for looking over the fence - the cow )

You just take it all as part of living with other people. Its life. The kids are noisy, people have BBQs (I HATE BBQs), ugly men who live next door lie in their pool in speedos then leave the pool up for months, slowly going green, people have parties and lob cans over your fence..
Its all part of life's rich tapestry and all that PLUS it is all ammnunition if any of them dare to bitch about anything me or the kids do [bgrin]

80ft garden i would not like to mow that

i used to have closer neighbours and would not let my kids play out before 9am and yes screaching was kept down but normal laughter no and did postion trampoline and was lucky that it could be postioned so could be at end of ebveryones gardens

But my kids were often told to shut the feck up by next door teens if out before1pm as they wanted to sleep .same teens forgetting that they played music late , reved cars late at night and come afternoon had mates round and i used to have to bring my kids in becuase their language ( im not talking the odd oh fuck i mean constant and no prude as have 2 teens as well as 2 younger dc

I moved and i love the guys in the yard who i said please tell me if find kids noisy there like lol no we hardly hear them .They was more worried about disturbing me when we moved in and they realised i ahve young kids as sometimes a breakdown truck goes out or in at silly oclock .But it does not disturb me nor the odd bangs etc and they are lovely .When trampoline needede moving due to work on garden .I started with ds1 and ds2 they realised and came over and helped and told me to ask in future

In return when i have Bbq i always shove extra burgers/sausages on and yell ok whose hungry and get voices back me and they come grab burger .

i honestley think i would now have problems living in close proximity to neighbours as am used to if kids want to play out at 8am that they can

Kerist, our lovely neighbour (who I appreciate more and more everytime I read these threads) takes her dogs in if they are barking at kids in the surrounding gardens - she is also returning an average of three balls a day back over various hedges! I think you were very polite.

YANBU. If you live in a town and have neighbours you can't expect it to be quiet all the time. And since the problem seems to be with their dog they should get the bloody thing trained properly so it doesn't bark all the time. Can you tell I have a kid and hate dogs? I have families either side, both with trampolines, and yes sometimes the kids are noisy, but we live in a town. If I wanted silence I'd move to a house in the country. Kudos to you for being so restrained - I'd have told him to piss off.

Threads like this remind me why I'm delighted NOT to have neighbours within 1/2 a mile!

No, in the scheme of things YANBU.

But you had, at various points that afternoon, 6 children all playing as children do (loudly). 80 ft away from you, but presumably not from your neighbours.

You've also mentioned that you have friends round, BBQs etc. So, reading between the lines, I do imagine that a fair amount of noise regularly comes from your house.

Put it this way, I wouldn't want to be near you. And I'm neither a man, old nor have a sensitive dog.

Do we know for example that the man's wife isn't ill?

Threads like this make me realise how lucky we are with our neighbours! One side is a retired couple, we have a 6 ft fence between us but the boys have found peep holes in it and I went out last week to tell them off (the were screaming) to find them sticking a bamboo cane through one of the holes, I told them off and made them apologise to the neighbour, only for his grown up daughter to then tell him that he should now apologise to them for winding them up and threatening them with the garden hose (hence the screaming!) Over the back to us is a lady with very yappy dogs, they are set off by anything, from the children playing, the sound of our back door opening ect, I don't think she would dare moan about noise from us as her dogs bark 24 hours a day and some are permanently in the garden!

YANBU It's a couple of hours occasionally not all day every day.

lljkk I'd suggest that someone remove your brain and sense of humanity but I see that someone's already done it.

Pity... I'd willingly have offered to do the job myself.

If you want total silence, you have to live without immediate neighbours. I'm on a housing estate, and my neighbour to the left is a drummer (he's very good), the neighbour to the right has a teenage son who listens to lots of gloomy music, the neighbours at the bottom have dogs/young children etc. I have chickens which are currently waking up and bokking off at about 7.30am. We all manage to get along without complaining to each other, because we're reasonable people. You generally manage to 'filter out' regular daytime noise I find. Different if you're being woken at 2am every night, but during the day you have to expect noise. And children playing isn't the worst sound by far.

yy Vallhala that made me feel physically ill.

Look, seriously, compromise: if you're allowed to make noise between 8am and 10pm, what would you say to neighbours who had stereos playing in their gardens after 9pm every night keeping your small DCs awake?

That said the dog bloke sounds like a nutter.... His dog sounds seriously stressed and afaik it is possible to accustom a dog to noise. When she was a puppy, our dog used to be freaked out by bins () and would dutifully bark at each one she saw. Taking her for a walk on a Thurs night was a trying experience....