To stop throwing the balls back over the fence?

[Danielsss]

Those bloody balls. The kids next door constantly play ball games, the balls always go over our fence! We would always get a knock on the door, every 2 minutes. I ended up saying if just throw it back over, it's still as frequent!!! How do I stop this?

FrancisCrawford, the police can't charge you with wasting police time for reporting a crime. If you have a problem with behaviour of children then there are legal ways to deal with it. Breaking the law is not a good example and does mean you have lost the moral high ground.

Hiding their balls is theft by the way.

Theft

This is the thread that keeps on giving.

accidently hidden, as in they've kicked them fuck knows where in the garden and they've conveniently found themselves stuck down the side of the shed.

If someone willy nilly launches something into your garden with no regard for where it ends up, it can't be theft to put no effort into finding it - utter nonsense. I am sure the police would be equally enamoured with having to deal with accusations of theft on that score.

I had a similar argument with a kleeneze person once. You can't shove stuff through my letterbox, expect me to take care of it and then return it to you a week later and then go mental because I recycled it instead. Once it was pushed through my letterbox and into my property, they lost the right to control what happens to it. Same goes for chucking your property into my garden.

Oh right so accidentally hidden actually means you don't go looking for it. I would get your story straight, police don't like these sort of changes.

Yeah of course they don't, on whatever planet you live on where people think calling the police is appropriate rather than, just well, you know, dealing with your neighbours or letting the message sink in...

Why not deal with your neighbours by asking them to stop the kids kicking the ball over, or making an agreement about throwing it back once or twice and then no more till the next day? Or is it never you who has to be reasonable? Breaking the law is a bad example to kids and 20 years with a large metropolitan force and a senior officer as a husband I never have and never will condone vandalism however much you may feel entitled. There are neighbourly ways to deal with things and legal way.

granny if you'd bothered to read the thread, I do have an arrangement. They are allowed to ring twice for permission to collect and then they just have to wait until it's convenient for me to return them. They aren't allowed to go in and retrieve without asking. If I have hazards such as garden tools etc out in the garden, I don't want children being in there without me knowing. It's a health and safety and a legal issue too, what if a child injured themselves on something if they went in without me knowing?

If I happen to be out in my garden and I see a ball I will return it. Lightweight and foam balls get returned the quickest as I appreciate that they are aware that I don't like them kicking heavy leather balls off the fence, they've already broken a piece of fence doing exactly that. So, if they are being considerate they get considerate treatment back.

I don't have any issues any more, because the kids quickly clocked on the situation. A couple of times coming over can be deemed accidental, beyond that is just carelessness and I wont entertain that and be at kids beck and call.

As I've said before, I am very generous to these kids and gave them a £300 trampoline that my teens weren't using. I am not a killjoy, I just disagree that calling the police when someone has decided to puncture a ball is not the correct course of action. Excluding complete nut jobs which are best avoided, any normal person must have been harassed to the point of loss of reason to puncture a kids ball, so if they've punctured your childs ball, you have to have a think about what the real issue is...not call the police on the perpetrator.

Francis, you mean you have a loose dog in your garden - what if a child gets bitten as they descend the ladder/come through the flap?

Won't anyone think of the children?

Why Granny you really haven't been reading the thread properly. Nobody is stealing the balls. They are just not willing to constantly run after the kids who are booting the balls into their garden. The only person, apart from you that is, who thinks that this is unforgivable and cruel, is math.Everyone else thinks it is perfectly fine to throw the balls back when you have the time. I don't think I've been in the back garden at all this week, so there could be a million balls lurking there now. And oh dear. I am working all weekend, so there could be two million by the time I get round to going out there.

He looks vicious. You should be throwing that poo back over the fence as soon as it lands! Oh wait...

Beautiful doggy btw. Wanker cat could eat him for breakfast and still have room for a slice of sparrow pie.

Interesting experiment, could form the bare bones of a detailed thesis at some point.

Wankercat is a lady, or should I say female, she's not much of a lady. She has a small white patch on her chest which apparently saves her from being a complete asswipe - I disagree. :o (we love her really - but if she could cut down on bringing live mice and sparrows into the house and sitting at the back of my car every single fecking time I want to reverse of the drive, we'd love her more).

I have a couple of ferocious moggies myself, Wankers. CandleCat1 might stir himself enough to hide under a bush if disturbed, thereby putting himself in grave danger from one of these pesky balls coming over my fence. CandleCat2 is frequently invisible in a bush, waiting for an unsuspecting bird to come along. He would doubtless maul any child venturing in to the garden.

Or else they would react true to form and flee over one of our other fences because a human had the temerity to come near them without being introduced! I'm such a loving cat mummy that I can't find a photo of them

Littleprincesssara:
Your area might not be wealthy but it's obviously extremely privileged compared to much of the world. Privilege doesn't mean money.
Bwahahahahaha
The area where I live is one where people have decided to create a civil and decent community. You are wrong to call it 'privilege'. What we have here is the result of conscious choice and a good deal of work.

You are dead right it doesn't mean money. I said that myself earlier.
"It's a lovely place to live because of people's attitudes and because people put themselves out to make it a pleasant place, and not because of money. You don't need money to be classy."

Wankers:
Do we not think the police have better things to be getting on with? There are far worse things that happen that the police aren't interested in. Kids get assaulted at school on a daily basis and it's called bullying and left to the school to deal with whereas I would deem that it's assault and more worthy of police resource than dealing with a burst football.

Neighbours bursting kids' balls is also bullying.
It is telling kids they are worth no consideration just as school bullying tells them that. It is a display of power vs. powerlessness just as school bullying is.

We visit all this crap on children, we think we have the right to dump on them and vent all our negativity on them - we behave really badly towards them and then we wonder why they turn on each other in school. Must be because they are innately vicious little horrors who would trample all over anyone who gave them an inch, right?

I can't imagine any sane person would deliberately burst a football on an occasion landing in the garden. to get to that point they have probably been harassed to the point of the loss of reason.
Seriously?
The reason people do this is because they are entitled little Hitlers with a chip on their shoulders against children. Sadly it seems they are inspired by the attitudes they find in their very grim and unkind wider society.

I posted this earlier, and I am right:
"We create the society that we inflict on our children. Our attitudes shape theirs. We model the behaviour that they copy, in schools and elsewhere.

We are apparently willing to invest a lot of energy into the sort of speech and behaviour that tells children they are at the bottom of the heap. We are so invested in this exercise in fact that we dismiss practical solutions to simple problems as ridiculous. Top-down nastiness creates a miserable environment for children.

What is school bullying if not the sort of jockeying for status that has been described on this thread in comments such as, 'Or perhaps the children should just wait until the OP has the time and inclination to get the ball. Children are not some sort of small God to be pandered to.'

This response is based on fear of losing some sort of imagined status that is seen as higher than a child's lower status. The qualities that would mark one as a loser in this fear-filled world so many of you inhabit are patience and kindness.

It is indeed a sad little world that you are busy creating."

Every single choice you make creates the world you live in.

Granny so nice to see a humane and realistic approach.

I shall have to consult with the CandleCats, as they might be able to shed some light on this mystery. CandleCat2 does catch and eat birds - feathers, feet and beak - and then throws it up a while later. He might well know. CandleCat1 is rather too idle to indulge in this sort of activity but might well know the answer.

Actually, Math, everyone is rather bored of you now, so we're hijacking this thread to solve the mystery of the Dead Headless Birds...

A dear friend had an incredibly fluffy cat who wrestled a live seagull through a cat flap and proceeded to murder it all over the newly installed kitchen... It did still have its head mostly attached. The new kitchen never really recovered.

A former CandleCat (sadly missed and gone far too soon) once disembowelled a bird on the living room carpet. XH only noticed after said disembowelling was complete. This might be why he is now and ex...

It's a shame you are so ignorant about the concept of endemic and systemic privilege.

Living in an affluent crime-free neighbourhood that is well stocked with local amenities and where people have enough spare time to do volunteer work IS a privilege.

If you have a roof over your head then you are privileged. Period. Privileged does not mean wealthy.

How is a disabled or mentally ill person who dropped out of high school, has to work three jobs to pay the rent, and lives in a high crime area with no libraries or art activities or volunteer organisations supposed to create the kind of idyllic utopia you describe?

That takes time (free time is a luxury and one many people do not have), it takes personal resources (a safe and secure home and adequate mental and physical health), local resources (libraries, etc.) and at least a comfortable income.

You're starting to sound like those hard core right wing "bootstrappers", you know, the people who claim Welfare programmes should not exist, because the homeless and those living in dire poverty could and should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

I repeat: what on earth does any of this have to do with the fact I'm an evil child-hating meanie poo for forcing fictitious children to wait a few days to retrieve a ball rather than make them climb a 10ft ladder on a concrete surface?

Oh, sorry (I just find bigotry against the poor and underprivileged to be so unspeakably vile).

I can offer the Epic Tale of the Cat vs the Tortoise.

(The tortoise won.)

The late littleprincecat was a giant wuss.