To be so frustrated and depressed by my neighbourhood

[Slowdownsally]

I posted the other day about my bully of a neighbour who was accosting other people demanding to know if they were the ones who had reported her to social services for neglecting her children.

I look out my window just now to see: a seven year old riding a scooter up and down the street with no parents in sight, I can hear a toddler crying in tiredness while his parents and friends drink in the streets and there's a whole other group of them also in their front gardens drinking whilst their small children play in the road.

Granted there's no real traffic to speak of, but it just seems so wrong.

There's at least four separate households where the parents couldn't give a stuff about their kids: they are only interested in themselves. The children are left out all the time and in the evenings they just sit outside everyone else's front doors drinking and chatting with their children playing in the street til 11pm.

Is this really what people do? I feel like I'm losing my compass as to what is normal parenting when I see this all the time. It won't stop when they are back at school either as none of them work.

Aibu to think this is wrong and to be frustrated that they all think this is normal parenting?

I don't think they do have opportunity and resources - we hand out scraps of money, but give people no tools to improve their lives.

Education is the key here, yet teachers' hands are tied by endless bureaucracy and a lack of resources.

My council has pointless community days where they wheel in bouncy castles into the estate twice a year and expect everyone to come out and play nicely together.

What happens is the only people who take part are my awful neighbours because no one else wants to be involved with them and when the council pack up for the day, they stay out, get drunk, have a fight and the police come out.

It's a vicious cycle of behaviour and it's learned behaviour because their families were just the same.

The more that is taken away the more wronged, stigmatised and less engaged people feel - a self fulfilling prophesy.

The LL must have an ASB policy. Do you know if they ever enforce it in any determined way?

It is a shame a few of the reasonable residents don't feel able to complain

They never enforce it. Last year there were some very large problems with a new family -alcohol abuse and young children - it was frightening.

There were numerous complaints and social services involved and for a period of a few months it changed, but as soon as the services stopped watching so closely (because it became calmer), it all slowly escalated again.

Now this family and the others all keep just the right side of the rules (as far as their concerned) but their attitudes haven't changed. You often hear them shouting overly loud things like: "don't go out to play in your pants or the social will be round" followed by laughing.

We also all get random missives from the housing officers reminding us to tidy gardens, not leave rubbish in the street etc. but it's not followed up.

The apathy from the local authority and the people concerned wears you down so much - I feel like giving up on hoping for any change and now all I want to do is get out.

I try to get on with neighbours even those whose lifestyle i disapprove. Its very easy to be judgy, but people really do have very serious issues. However, late bedtimes? C'mon... First world problem.

Dog - lack if sleep can cause serious problems for a child's development especially if it is every night like this. It's also a lack of boundaries, inappropriate adult behaviour that children see and copy and neglect.

If it were an occasional party with late nights that's completely different, but I'm talking about it being every night to the point where it almost seems normal - it is normal for them.

My old neighbourhood was very posh! All the mums stayed home, houses were huge, both parents college educated. They still drank starting in the afternoons!! Yes, maybe using fancy wine glasses, but drinking while the kids beat up on each other just the same.

Late (later than usually British) certainly does not mean lack of sleep. Maybe they get up later, maybe they have a nap -- especially if they don't go to school.

The thing is there is no incentive for them to change. If they don't buy their child a uniform, social services buy it to stop the child being stigmatised. If they don't look after their house/ garden, the council do it eventually, or a community group do it. If they can't buy food they go to a foodbank- yet our kids who live like this have takeaways 2 or 3 times a week and get taxis to school.

I don't want any family to suffer but equally, I think we are a society that gives too much and expects too little in return from the people who are given it. They have responsibilities but are not made to step up to them. They are very keen on their 'rights' but not on their responsibilities.

Dog - they do go to school. Are you deliberately missing the point?

Lulu - I think you are right about a lack of incentive that comes with the lack of ambition, but I don't think penalising people or punishing them is the right approach.

I never really understand how the 'underclass' as it is being called has been 'let down' by the government and by education in particular. Okay. not all children can go to the top school (public or state) in the country but generally most schools in the UK are pretty good, teachers care and all are funded equally (although with the new 'pupil premium' schools in deprived areas actually get more money). However you do have to actually attend school regularly to benefit from it and parental attitude towards education has been proved to be a more important factor than parental attainment or income. I speak as a teacher working in a school serving a pretty deprived area and married to someone brought up on a fairly rough council estate whose parents were not well educated but encouraged their children to work hard. Don't know how you break the cycle though - certainly depriving families of benefits will only cause more suffering to the children although seeing money being poured into what seems a hopeless cause is very annoying!

Would you feel different if this was Centre Parcs, and all the MC 7 year olds were riding their scooters about, while their parents sat outside and drank cava?

The neighbour with SS involved is a different issue.

Ok read the rest of the thread- it looks as though you're having problems with a few families, not the entire area. Why don't the reasonable neighbours band together and complain about the problem families? My SIL had to do this a few years ago, her otherwise nice cul de sac had terrible problems with a certain family. It took a while, but they got shifted eventually

Valerie,

That might be the only solution for peace whilst we live here. The problem with that is a fear of the difficult neighbours and that we all share a very small neighbourhood.

I know others have complained or reported to social svcs, but there doesn't seem to be a long term impact.

I sometimes go past the house I grew up in. What used to be a lovely garden with borders all filled with flowers is now a dump with lots of broken old toys scattered about. Often I see young mothers sat on the wall drinking while ignoring their children playing on the green in front of them. When I was a child this was something that you just didn't see. It was just a more gentle time. It saddens and depresses me to see how things have deteriorated so badly.

That's heartbreaking Maisie.

My old family home was demolished to make way for flats this year. It still feels very strange to go past the site.

Your post has also just reminded me why I don't want my child to grow up here. If he does, he'll see people like that everyday.

I think it sounds rather lovely, the neighbours enjoying a glass of wine an a chat in the front garden on a warm Saturday evening, keeping an eye on the children all playing together on the quiet street.
I remember we used to live in a cul de sac when my eldest were little and the parents would all sit on our garden with a cuppa and a biscuit whilst the children rode round on their bikes, go-karts etc (not as late as your neighbours admittedly) but it felt like a really warm comminity.

ha ha you have to be joking,it's more likely the cheapest booze with the biggest quantity they can get,i really dont think you have pictured the scene in this circumstance

and i dont imagine theres to many biscuits being passed about,oh no maybe a hash cookie

so so glad my parents moved out of the estate we lived on

my ex brother in law still lives there,5-6 wrecked cars in the front garden,staffie and bull dog running all over the place,dont get me started on the inside,he has been on incapacity/esa for 20yrs with a bad back,tennis elbow and irritable bowl (think sausages cooked in a deep fat fryer and roast potatoes) ,not suprised he's on the bloody toilet all the time

many on here will think this is exagerated or made up,it is not i could write a novel about it

if you have lived or know people that do you will some insight to how awful it must be for the op

Thanks ilovechristmas.

I know a few other families across the village - they refer to this place as Beirut.

When I first moved here and started making friends 2/3 families immediately stopped speaking to me when they found out I lived here.

I wouldn't want to be friends with such snobs, but it is hurtful.

I'm seriously considering sending my child to a school in another village so that we won't get tarred with the brush of this neighbourhood and to get him away from these people.

Bah! So depressing.

They've all just brought out the bottles for another night and two of the blokes are sporting new black eyes - charming.

Oh, and there's a gazebo on the pavement... Deep joy

We lived on an estate like this. It was, maybe, 3 very large families ruining it for everybody else.
I actually think the problem is twofold:
Firstly, you learn how to be a parent by the way you are parented. If your parents don't talk to you, stick you in front of DVD's all the time, or out in the street, if you only eat rubbish, and never get enough sleep you will not develop the skills you need to parent someone else adequately.
The second thing, and this is the thing that is recent I think, is the effects of alcohol addiction, and only caring about drink, over all other things.

I'm a Housing Officer for a Housing Association. If you live in social housing OP, I'd suggest you get in touch with your Housing Officer or Asb officer and ask them to register your concerns formally as A S B. You are entitled to live in your home without being disrupted by your neighbours and drinking outside late at night is ASB, so is the noise of children playing out til late at night. Also contact your local community police and ask them to get involved. You can ask for this to be completely confidential, so you are not identified. Ive always taken a really strong line for this kind of ASB with 'my' tenants, as there's nothing worse than sleep deprivation.

Mondaymornings - thank you.

Writing this thread has made me realise quite how fed up I am and how anti-social they are.

I think I'll write a lengthy email tomorrow and copy in the community police team as well as ASB rep and housing officer. During all of last year's chaos we had pcsos doing laps of the estate every few hours. Perhaps it's time they came back and if I copy them in the housing officer (who individually has history for being useless) might actually do something.

You're completely right, as are all the other helpful people on this thread - it's not reasonable behaviour and it needs to be challenged.

theres a gazebo on the pavement...... how depressingly typical and unsurprising.

On my old street they have actually had these things (gazebos) in the road, thereby blocking it off to traffic so they (the drinkers) can drink in peace with their kids playing unsupervised and music on full blast. When did it all go so horribly wrong.

Sounds like the street we used to live in. Put up with it for 7 years, how and why I have no idea.

I think those that are undermining the problem dont realise how depressing it can be.

The families who behave like this generally know the most they can get away with and live to that line. You (posters on this thread generally not just the OP) are talking about how the children are going to grow up unruly, in my street they already by the time they were 8. DH was called a dickhead by a 7 year old once.

We left behind our friends and family and moved to a new town to get away from our street. We now live in a small rural village. We dont really like the village life, but if its this or an estate (we still live in a council house) its definitely much better here.