To have found this encounter re kids playing outside apartment very strange

[Vintagejazz]

There is a Green about 20 yards from my apartment. About 15 minutes ago went out and asked a group of kids who had been shouting and playing right below our apartment window to go and play on the Green. They said okay and I went back inside.

They immediately moved back under my sitting room window playing and shouting and looking up at our window andswinging out of a lampost and I went down again. They scarpered onto the Green when they saw me coming and I went around and told them again to stay on the Green and not use the grass area underneath the apartment for loud games at 10 o'clock at night when people were trying to sleep or get kids to sleep. I also asked a couple of them where they lived and said I would speak to their parents if they kept making noise like that at the apartment block late at night. The said okay and I walked away. As I was walking away I saw a youngish woman coming onto the Green and assumed it was a parent finally calling her child in.

As I walked back towards my apartment she called after me and started asking me why I had a problem with children playing on the Green. I said I had no problem with them playing on the Green, in fact I had asked them to play there. She then said 'well the children are going to be playing on the Green. So are you going to be knocking on parents' doors for that'? I repeated that I had actually asked the children to play on the Green and why shouldn't they be on the Green? It was them playing on the grass right below people's apartment windows at ten o'clock that was the problem, and I had asked them to move to the Green.

She then said 'right, as long as you know they will be playing on the Green'. And I said, 'that's fine. But an apology would be nice for them being disruptive' and she said 'okay, but they're not my children'?

WTF? AIBU to wonder what that was about?

How would it be a thinly veiled dig?

And I didn't say it wasn't acceptable for kids to play out at 10. I said they should play on the Green and not right underneath my apartment windows.

Apparently one of the children went home crying because I asked her where she lived and said I would speak to her parents.

I actually feel sick now, and close to tears myself. I've sent an email to the child's father explaining what happened but I feel like I just want to move. I really hate confrontation like this and it didn't occur to me for a minute that a child would cry because they were told to play on the Green and that I would speak to their parents if they continued to make noise outside my apartment.

10?? Blimey, I'm in bed at 9!

I think sometimes people just like a good argument, and make assumptions about situations.

I had a similar experience a few years ago. There is a roundabout at the end of the road I used to live on, that most residents used to turn their cars around if facing the wrong direction. One day I drove down the road, all the way around the roundabout, as I was approaching the second to last exit another car very nearly pulled out on me, I looked at her in shock but carried on driving, then pulled up outside my house, she followed me, and pulled up behind me. I got out of my car, she got out of hers, shouting at me. I explained what I had done was legal, it was alright for me to go all the way around, told her to check the Highway Code, she agreed that was what the Highway Code said, but carried on saying I was in the wrong for going right the way around the roundabout . Her passenger then got out screaming and shouting at her, they then had a massive argument in the street, a few neighbours came out, we are all looking at each other thinking WTF. To this day I haven't got a clue what it was about and I just put it down human oddity.

Anyway, I had been thinking about moving for a while because there's been real problems with gangs of teenagers and older kids the last couple of Summers and it's getting me down.
So this has galvanised me to organise for a couple of estate agents to come around next week and value my apartment. Even if it takes a while to organise a move, the fact that I'm thinking about it might make it easier to put up with some of the shit.
Thanks for the comments on here. It's made me see things in a better perspective.

They might have been told not to play on the green for some reason, maybe it's safer by your apartment. You won't know until you talk to people on the level and find out.

Children cry when they're tired, so don't feel bad about that.

The father of the child who cried has said that he has now told his children to stick to the Green and the playground and not to play right outside the apartments or trespass on the creche grounds beside the apartment. He has still made it clear though that he doesn't believe my version of events and thinks I ordered the kids off the Green, which is obviously what his daughter (who's actually 12 and was one of the older ones in the group as far as I could tell) told him when she was crying.

Well that's a good solution then. Sorted.