Pavement Chalk

[tiredandsadmum]

Lived in my house 18 years. Good relations with all the neighbours. Just had my 1st complaint tonight. DS (age 8) and several children (similar ages) in the road have been drawing on the road and pavement with pavement chalk. They had a blast. Neighbour has complained on the grounds it looked unsightly and apparently other neighbours are also not keen.

There is drawing outside her house, so I apologised, said I would ask DS not to draw there ( I don't think he did but was part of the gang). I did make it clear though that I was happy for DS to continue to draw outside my house. She was really grumpy about it. I did then explain that it was pavement chalk and would wash away the minute it rained. She said it isn't raining now and walked off . I feel I have been polite, have said its not OK for them to draw on her frontage and would deal with that but want them to have safe fun outside mine. AIBU?

(She was also really fed up with my cat following her back down the road and being over friendly but that would be another thread!)

I don't like it at all but a paint brush and water is fine!

I LOVED doing chalk stuff on the pavement outside my granny's house when we went there in the holidays! All of us (dbro and dsis's) felt very deprived that our own house only had a couple of flagstones to scrawl on...

Your NDN is suffering from Grumpy Old Bag syndrome. It is curable, but only if the GOB wants to join in and share the joy.

How sad. I wish children played out like that round here, the closest thing to pavement chalking is 'wank' sprayed on a bin
In my back yard my children paint on the wall and path with brushes and water maybe yours could do that.

YANBU. What is WRONG with people? So darn miserable . Suppose you'll just have to avoid the path outside their house. Silly.

Mardy thing. Can't see what is wrong with chalk on pavements, I like reading what the kids have written. When we were young we used to find stones to chalk with, and on more than one occasion picked up white dog poo by mistake. [puke]

We had a fab hopscotch outside out house last year, different people kept adding to it so it ended up going along the road and around the corner, up to about 250 squares!

Ex dh hated dd using it. Not the only reason we separated, his general distaste for fun didn't help.

I read a thread like this a couple of weeks ago :/ ?? Anyone?
Just pity your miserable neighbour, for joy does not live within her no mo', and vow never to get like that.

I would be nice to the neighbour as she has so recently been widowed. . I can understand her being a bit mardy.
However, I definitely wouldn't stop the kids from playing with chalk. I think I would wash the chalk off from around her house and get the kids to chalk in front of 'friendly' houses.

In other words, I think the OP is doing the right thing.

Cheap-I did too, almost word for word the same

Would the DC like to do another activity tomorrow, I suggest something noisy perhaps they can do battle of the bands.

Saucepans and wooden spoon drums is a good suggestion

Cheap - I did too. Was beginning to wonder if I'd imagined it!

Don't let your neighbour read this. She might get ideas about arrests and fines.

Sad really, unless they'd been drawing cocks or something.

I too would wash off the drawings outside her house and lets the kids continue outside mine.

You did better than me OP. Id be out there now, vino in hand drawing a huge inappropriate member outside her house just to piss her off in the morning.

She is grumpy and utterly ridiculous, but you do not have to be nasty or vindictive to her as some posters are suggesting. You have done all the right things already and there is nothing to retaliate about. You have 18 years of being a great neighbour. Not sure why people think it would be funny to antagonize her

Next time the kids want to chalk just hand them a bucket of water and a brush and tell them to clean up when they're done.
I've never heard of pavement chalk before, but I shall be looking out for some now it sounds great!

Miserable twats. Mine are a lot older now, but I think it's lovely - happy kids AND pretty colours. What's not to like?
Seriously, it washes, what's the harm?

Go draw a massive smiley face in chalk outside her house.

Chalking on the pavement is great fun - but I live in scotland so usually the picture is rained on before its finished.

Must add chalk to my shopping list. We donated a huge box along with other fun outdoor stuff when we moved and had to pay s much for the shipping. I'm sure the neighbors here wouldn't mind.
Your neighbor is being a big old scrooge. Let the kids have fun. It'll rain soon enough I wouldn't even bother with a bucket of water. Dd used to make hopscotch squares and get me to join in. Good exercise.

You can make your own chalk with plaster of Paris and food colouring, tape the end of toilet roll rubes so they are sealed, mix plaster of Paris and add food colouring, the liquid stuff works best and pour into the toilet roll moulds, once dry peel off the tubes. You may want to line the tubes with grease proof paper.

When we got home from work last night, our neighbours' kids had chalked a zebra crossing onto the road from their house to the green. It made us both laugh

DH and I often join the kids chalking on the ground, DH drew most of the cast of the Lego Movie a couple of weeks ago. It's great fun and completely harmless.

She is being unreasonable.

DS loves pavement chalk, and although I usually keep him outside our own house we have recently done some walks around our streets where we both drew arrows and wrote directions on the pavement as a 'map' of where we had been.

We have also counted our steps (every fifteen steps, how many steps we have to go between gates, how many steps between lamp posts etc) and wrote the number on the floor in chalk.

Partly for something different to do to keep DS entertained, partly because his teacher set a project for counting and measuring and this was something a bit different to the norm.

And every time we have been out, we've come across someone else's pavement chalkings and DS has been delighted. He's often added a bit of his own to them and we've also seen children adding bits to ours.

And when it rains it disappears. She's being daft.

The only rule I've given DS is not to draw on people's walls, as it doesn't wash off in the rain quite so easily if it's on the side of a wall. And he knows not to try and chalk on cars or anything.