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?

I'm not letting a child climb a 10ft ladder on a concrete surface, nor would I allow a child to be around a pool or pond unsupervised. It's incredibly dangerous.

If a kid throws a ball when I'm at work they will just have to live without it for a few hours. I'm sure they'll survive.

Make a ladder it of my fence?! Are you on glue?! That would wreck my fence after maybe three times. It would just snap all the slats.

What a completely ridiculous suggestion that children should be allowed free access to my garden! Tons of problems there-child hurts himself climbing/falling onto my gravel/dog poo/in my pond/dog bites him/he destroys a bush falling into it.

If the boys are asking too often, the OP needs to speak to the neighbour and organise a time she will chuck back balls at HER convenience. And some pp reckon refusing to throw a ball back=contributing to the obesity crisis. Jesus Christ!

Honestly, Math? You really, truly know every single child in the neighbourhood who might walk past? You must live in a small place. I used to work in the local school, so know quite a number of children by sight, but I can guarantee most of my neighbours don't know these kids at all, because they don't have children of that age, therefore are highly unlikely to know them. And yes, the kids round here to tend to travel in packs of half a dozen or so, although the nastiest ones go around in pairs.

If I am in the garden having a quiet drink of an evening, I might throw a ball back over when I first go out, but I am not getting up and down to continually return it. You are also assuming that everyone is able to go out and retrieve a ball easily, which is not the case in every situation. If that makes me anti social, then so be it. Do I look worried? Because if so, you are looking at the wrong person.

Your deluded ideas have been very entertaining, dear. However, you appear to have very little grip in reality and are coming across as frankly ridiculous.

Hahahaha! No way am I installing steps on the fence for the kids to climb over. For one thing, the fence is one of those fragile panelled things and would collapse. Secondly, just no. Ludicrous idea.

But littleprincesssara, they will be without it for days in your case. Does that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

the OP needs to speak to the neighbour and organise a time she will chuck back balls at HER convenience
Why so insistent on HER convenience?
What does the implied anger and impatience add to the sum of positive vibes in the neighbourhood?
Why should neighbours go around being so awful to each other?
What is the big positive effect of this dreadful attitude? It must be huge, to justify such nastiness.
In the case of those lobbing balls back whenever you feel up to it, you are keeping other people's property out of sheer obduracy.
Unclench, people.

It's funny but sad at the same time to read people's concern about children hurting themselves climbing but the same people are completely unconcerned that a child has nothing to do all day while waiting for you to climb down off your high horse to throw a ball back.
Summers are short and youth is fleeting.
Really, shame on you all for your mulishness.

LittleCandle, I do know the 30 or so families who are my closest neighbours. I don't know all the kids who walk past because there is a high school about five minutes away and over 3,000 teens repair there daily. I know many students to see. I divide them into groups in my head according to how late they appear to be in the morning and how much they seem to care.
I live in an old suburb of a huge city of about 8 million. It takes me about 15 minutes to drive to the centre of the city, and about half an hour station to station by train.

Nobody has fenced in or walled front gardens, and there are very few hedges. Can you imagine it? Kids can run right through your front lawn, leap your precious plants, sit on your front steps, play ball, throw their bikes on your lawn... Some groups of neighbours have even eliminated their back fences. They still manage to cultivate gardens, grow vegetables, fruit trees, enjoy BBQing, sitting out on decks, splashing in wading pools, defending koi ponds from marauding raccoons and herons and hawks. It's a pleasant and easygoing lifestyle. There are alleys behind the back gardens, and detached garages open onto the alleys, where the wheelie bins are stationed. People tend to have basketball nets in the alleys, attached to garage roofs or freestanding with a pole. All day and all night, kids pound the basketball and the balls often fly over into gardens. The basketball kids come from all over the place. They are not necessarily from the neighbourhood. There is also a lot of football, and again lots of flying balls. Plus baseball, tennis, badminton.

People of all ages live here and we all make an effort to get to know each other. This is because it is considered really weird not to. There are very, very few nasty kids here. That tends to be the case when they all know people know them and know their parents.

The frankly bizarre idea that you can or should only be expected to know neighbourhood children if you have children yourself, as if it's a chore associated with one stage in life and once the stage is over That's It, you've done your bit, contributes to the disconnection that teens feel in societies where people are so stand offish. That in turn feeds anti social behaviour, the development of little tribes of kids, and the horrible mutual suspicion between different age groups that mars British society.

I was recently embarrassed to find my neighbour's granddaughters favourite ball embedded in a rose bush. It had been there six months. I had checked when they first told me and couldn't find but could see a similar one in another garden so told them to approach those people. I felt a complete heel, threw it over and went and saw the child next visit to apologise profusely.

I throw balls back as a rule when I notice them. It might be tempting sometimes but would never damage them.

But littleprincesssara, they will be without it for days in your case. Does that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

Um... No?

It's a minor inconvenience for the kid but hardly a tragedy.

I grew up in an abusive household. Sorry if I'm not weeping at the idea of a child cruelly forced by their own irresponsibility to exist for a few days to make do with only 99% of their toys.

'Irresponsibility'?

Wow, someone really needs to look up the date Queen Victoria died.

You don't believe that a little kindness goes a long way?
You assume children have shedloads of toys. Why?

What if a child was suffering in his own life and the only joy he experienced was kicking his football and dreaming of playing for Liverpool [or insert team name]. And then you went abroad and his football languished in your walled in garden for a week of his precious six week summer holidays.

Math, the area you live in sounds fascinating. On the one hand it's a bucolic 1950s Darling Buds of May idyll where the entire neighbourhood is best buddies. But on the other hand is so severely deprived the loss of one single ball means children are entirely deprived of entertainment and have to stare at the wall until it's returned?

Sorry if I'm not weeping at the idea of a child cruelly forced by their own irresponsibility to exist for a few days to make do with only 99% of their toys.

I'm sorry too, that you seem to think you're entitled to spread misery when you could choose a better option.

Just to be clear:

It's your Victorian neighbourhood where children have to stare at the wall because you and people like you prefer to make passive aggressive gestures when it comes to other people's property.

In mine children are free to retrieve their own balls so they don't have to spend time staring at the wall/fence, etc.

math one of my boundaries is a dry stone wall. You really think I should be encouraging/allowing kids to climb that? When it falls down who pays for it to be put back up as it is an incredibly skilled job? Who is responsible for the kids hurting themselves?

To be fair if the only option for the kids is play with ball or stare at the wall then they need to learn how to play don't they?

Do you honestly think I should take regular breaks from work to throw balls back?!

It's a fairly new issue for me - the kids aren't next door. They're managing to get their balls across next doors and into mine. That looks suspiciously not like an accident to me!

How exactly am I "spreading misery"?

Okay, tell me exactly what to do, because the way I see it there are only two possible options:

1. Quit work to stay home all day just in case a poor, neglected child who only owns one toy despite living in a £2mill flat in central London throws that toy over, not be able to pay my bills, wind up homeless.

1. Install 10ft fences on concrete surfaces at personal cost, and permit small children to do something extremely dangerous unsupervised that has a high probability of death or serious injury.

You must have realised that I was responding to Littleprincesssara and her mention of an abusive childhood?

I am still not sure exactly what she was suggesting with that contribution:
That all other children have a better time than she did? Is there resentment at play here?
That all children have oodles of other toys besides the balls that are languishing in her garden so they have no right to feel put out that she makes children wait for balls to be returned as a point of principle?
That she is entitled to be mean to children?
That they are not suffering as much from their neighbours' meanness as children suffering an abusive childhood /any loss of fun and property doesn't matter because others have or had it worse?

Oh, Math, you are just getting more and more ridiculous. It is so entertaining to come on and see what rubbish you are spouting now. Children are basically not interested in adults they don't know, and unless your are the mum of a friend of theirs, they quite possibly don't even know that you exist. You are not interesting to them and if they did ask you for their ball back, they will have forgotten all about you within seconds. You are not really their friend. They tolerate you when they have to and ignore you the rest of the time. It must be so nice for you to live in this dream world of yours, so I'm sure you won't believe what I have just written. Which film did you see this Utopian world in?

I am sorry that you are still under the misapprehension that we are deliberately causing misery to these poor deprived little innocents by not throwing their balls back the very second they land in our gardens. You may welcome all comers with open arms at every minute of the day and night, but the rest of us would like to have our property and homes to ourselves. I did not buy a house to share with the whole world. Yes, I am being totally possessive about this and why shouldn't I be? I pay for the upkeep of the house and garden, not the neighbourhood (and beyond) kids and my garden is not the local park. As it happens, I was not in my back garden yesterday and so if there was a ball languishing there, pining piteously for its owner who has only one toy, it is still languishing there. It may languish there for several more days, as I do not yet know if I shall be going outside into the back garden. Oh dear. I can just imagine the poor darlings from your neighbourhood weeping into their pillows at night.

Yeah, anyway, as I was saying - bollocks!

but the same people are completely unconcerned that a child has nothing to do all day

What's really bizarre is that you have so little imagination you think the options are

1. Kick a football around a garden
2. Do nothing

Luckily, pretty much every kid in the world has more imagination than you. They will not be sitting forlornly holding the last piece of coal and wishing for their ball back.

Math, it's frankly vile that you would exploit the fact I've chosen to reveal an extremely vulnerable and traumatic part of my childhood (one I've talked about a great length and received a lot of support over from other Mumsnetters) to accuse me of hating and resenting children. Totally unacceptable.

And please stop telling lies about me. I have explicitly said I would throw a ball over asap if I could. I am not making (hypothetical) children wait "as a point of principle" but because I AM AT WORK. You are extremely fortunate that you apparently don't have to, but if I don't work I don't eat.

I am not being "mean" simply by having a full time job.

Please remember this is 100% hypothetical. There are no children living in my neighbourhood.

Jacques, weirdly enough I am very familiar with dry stone walls as my mum grew up on a farm where many of the fields and lanes were bordered by them. The beauty of dry stone walls is that you can take a little out of them or even make a good sized gap in them to allow sheep (for instance) to travel from one field to another, and then rebuild your own wall.

And yes, the kids are trying to see how much they can wind you up by purposefully kicking a ball as far as they possibly can?
You never played ball as a child? Never played ball badly?
And kids are of course evil.

Littleprincesssara, I am sure you will appreciate that abuse and neglect of children is not confined to impoverished areas.

Francis:
You have an OP, a real person, who is constantly pestered by a child, pestered several times a day. Do you have any empathy for her? No. Your sympathy is reserved for your imaginary victims, these poor little Dickensian waifs.
I have repeatedly suggested sensible alternatives to the situation where the children feel they must knock. Apparently my suggestions are too funny for words.

Other suggestions involving outright anger, regrettable displays of passive aggression, actual violence towards the offending balls, and overall any act that conveys to the children what little scum they are and how low in the pecking order they stand have all been in the majority.

Lovely.

Are we discussing other threads now?

Because surely that is a thing that is frowned upon here on MN, for various sensible reasons?

Just throw them back blimey kids are are young for such a short while and the weather will be horrible again soon. Why are some people so miserable. It must be annoying but it's a few balls

Math, still waiting for you to suggest a practical course of action, considering the only options are a) quit work b) seriously endanger children?

Btw I give up a lot of my time and money in volunteering with pneglected and abused children. So I feel confident I'm doing my bit, even if it means the occasional hypothetical "multi millionaire child who only owns one toy" occasionally has to wait a while to retrieve a lost ball.