to think our neighbours are being unreasonable? (Sorry, Very Long!)

[ChocolateGirl]

We have lived in our semi-detached house for eight years and our neighbours, on the unattached side, have never been very friendly. They didn't really speak to us at all for the first two years but Mrs X did "catch us on the driveway" and come over to see the baby when I had our first DC. After that we sometimes exchanged "Good mornings", sometimes ignored one another, occasionally had a polite chat.

They have been helpful and considerate on a few important issues:

1. letting us see their loft conversion when we were thinking of having one done
2. kindly allowing us to have scaffolding in their garden for about 5-6 months last year when we were having an extension built
3. allowing us to bolt our side door onto the side of their garage (to keep it upright. Sorry, not the best explanation but I hope you see what I mean).

However, since our extension was finished they have not really spoken to us at all. So we generally just ignore one another and that's fine.

We did notice last year that when our children were playing in the garden they would turn a radio on quite loudly. We thought maybe their 10 year old son was getting in to pop music... but then this happened:

One day last summer when my 3 children (6, 4 and 2) were playing in the garden, I heard the following conversation take place in unnaturally loud voices. Mr and Mrs X came out of their back door and

Mrs X: "They're the worst neighbours we've ever had!"
Mr X: "We'll have to take legal action!"
Mrs X: "I've had three children and mine were never like that! They're out of control!"

It gradually dawned on me that they were complaining about us!

Luckily we were not in the garden very much over the summer at the same time as them. They went away, we went away. etc. I do remember there was another occasion (possibly the only occasion) when we were both out in our gardens and she said loudly to her husband "I'm going in, Mr X, I can't relax with the noise those children are making!"

Now, my children are noisy when they play in the garden. Some of the time they are quiet - but when I say quiet I don't drawing-and-colouring quiet - I mean, chatting, crawling through the tunnel and sitting in the tent quiet. And some of the time they are noisy - running around, playing Power Rangers, shouting, squealing, shrieking with excitement, crying if they fall over or quarrel. But nor persistent, incessant screaming noisy. And they are never out there every day or all day. I consider it to be a reasonable number of children making a reasonable amount of noise at a reasonable time to the day.

I mentioned it to the 101 people when they had a Publicity Stand at Tesco's and they said they had never known anyone to complain about he noise made by children playing in the garden, only about the noise of machinery or stereos/tvs. They also said asked if I thought Mr and Mrs X were trying to intimidate me. Mr X is a policeman (!) and both these incidents happened when my husband was out.

Anyway, to (finally!) get to the point. The kids went to play in the garden yesterday, for the first time this year, and were out there for about an hour or maybe an hour and a half. They were making the usual amount of noise. Towards the end of this time I heard shouting and went outside to see what was going on. My husband had been at the front of the house, outside, and was making his way up the path to the back of the house. I got outside to hear Mr X shouting "Steve, if you don't do something about those bl--dy kids, they're making my life a misery, I'm gonna come over there and we're gonna have fists." DH ignored him.

It was upsetting, frightening and intimidating. But that was the end of it. I asked my six year old if Mr X had shouted at them and he said no he was shouting at his own son.

We left the kids playing out and they chose to come in after about another ten minutes.

I discussed the situation with my husband and we reported Mr X to 101. They are going to call back about it in a few days.

But I'm frightened it's going to happen again. I was glad it was raining today so I didn't have to face going into the garden. Basically, I am just going to dread going out there now. I suppose after last summer I just hoped the situation would go away but it hasn't, it's got worse. We don't feel we can go round and talk to them now Mr X has threatened violence, so I'm just hoping the 101 people will come up with something.

I'm not being unreasonable, am I? I sppreciate the fact that Mr and Mrs X want peace and quiet and don't like to hear the noise of children playing. But I want to be able to allow my children to play in the garden and to be able to make a reasonable amount of noise if they want to. There is peace and quiet much more often than there is noise, there are never more than 5 children in the garden (usually just my 3), they are never out there more than a few hours at a time and it is not every day. Mainly odd days on nice-weather weekends and in the nice-weather holidays. Never before 9am, never after 7pm.

I would appreciate anyone posting their opinions on who is being unreasonable here and what I can do to stop our neighbours behaving like this.

Thank you very much and sorry this is so very, very long.

I am mainly a lurker but have occasionally posted for a couple of years, by the way!

Having fallen out with our neighbour (over our cats) I can only offer you my heart felt sympathasies. They sound horrid!

Our wacky neighbour, like your neighbours, would f and blind about us in her garden and never actually talk to us face to face! She is a big coward! However, the straw that broke the camal's back was after our cats had caught a bird and she vandalised our bikes! We don't own a car and need our bikes for getting us and our 2dds around! She is a big fruitcase! We didn't do anything about it but decided to move!

The trouble is any kind of action and you need to declare it on a form when you move house - I would not move in to a house with any kind of problem neighbours!

That's a good point, cazzybabs, and on our minds because, after building this very expensive extension, dh had a pay-cut and we're now struggling to pay the mortgage! So we might be moving in the not-to-distant future. I don't want to move and I certainly don't want to be forced out by them... we'll just have to see what happens.

Lots of sympathy for your dreadful experience... and for everyone else who posted with much worse than we're going through... our neighbours are certainly strange in that they don't seem to have any friends or visitors but not as fruit-cakey as that. Not yet, anyway!

Thanks again for all your posts. I will let you know what 101 say and what we do.

These are very very difficult situations. Not as to who is right (your children are fine, normal and not breaching any noise levels) but because of the psychological effects. My sister had all this and I am afraid in the end she moved. Her local council said her children's noise could never be unreasonable. it's normal. She and the neighobours were exchanging letters and they even had a session with the council mediation scheme face to face. It got so she was trying to keep small children up at 6am every day really quite which is impossible.

Obviously one way to deal with it is to ask to see them for a friendly chat and say you've spoken to the council and been told chidlren's noise is not illegal or unusual but that threats of violence are criminal offence and that must never happen again, that you're going to put it in writing for the record... oh dear... may be that's not a good idea if we're trying to all be friends again .. impossible.

Don't be intimidated by him being a policeman. They actually have to behave properly so that they don't bring the force into disrepute. He has an awful lot ot lose if you bring a complaint against him, so make sure he knows you know that and can't be bullied by him.

Hello everyone... Just thought I would update you all on what has happened since my OP.

After ringing 101 last week, a neighbourhood policeman from the local police station rang in the week to discuss the incident. This Inspector was very nice and advised us to go round and talk to our neighbours. DH (hero!) went round this afternoon and was greeted with anger by Mr X who maintained that our children are out of control, that they put his wife in hospital with stress and high blood pressure last summer and that he "doesn't care about his career, it's going to come to blows!" Then he ordered DH off his property "or I'll thump you!" So that didn't go very well.

Except... that he also said they're moving! Hurrah! He didn't say when but he did say they were getting the house ready to put on the market because "they can't put up with living next to us for the next 10 years!"

The relief is huge.

Tomorrow we will ring the Inspector and tell him what's happened.

And I will let you all know...

Thank you again for your posts. They made me feel much better last week.

at them!

Even though they are moving , if neighbour continues in his aggressive nature then I would consider making a complaint about him to his police station.

Oooh, big party at chocolategirl's every night from now until the neighbours move, just to send them merrily on their way?

You are right, they are wrong. Does sound a bit like M X might be hving some sort of breakdown - cold be why he's acting so oddly and making these threats.

Oh how ridiculous, even IF your children were as bad as he says wouldnt it have been better if he just came round LAST YEAR and said "any chance the kids could be a bit quieter" rather than festering on it for a year then behaving like a thug.

sounds more like Mrs X has high blood pressure and stress from living with latent and potentially violent Mr X.

Just want to add my sympathy - so stressful to feel you can't go into your garden. In our road,about 12 kids would play on the green, after school & weekends - great. One neighbour worked nights & complained, was v. intimidating. I started trying to 'shush' the dch until coming to my senses. Went to Citizens Advice, who said if people want to live differently (ie work nights) they can't expect you to change behaviour. Turned out there were others who worked nights, but used earplugs & were fine. So I told them 'tough'. We've moved now (different neighbour probs!) and it was a relief.

My advice is: 1) Make sure you aren't in the wrong at all - that dch aren't screaming at the tops of their voices for an hour. Then, 2) Don't pander to the neighbours. They aren't reasonable people - if they were, they'd have had a quiet chat ('We realise dch make noise, but would you mind...'etc).

Good luck.

agree that the threat of violence has instantly put them in a position of having to defend their words/actions - which is good news for you. Make a note of what he said, the time of day etc. he is a police officer and as someone else has said, this will not auger well for his career.You can report him to his superiors for such comments.

The bottom line is you are not doing anythinf wrong and if they don't like children that is their problem. Make it clear to them that if they say or do anything that implies a threat to your kids you will take it up with the police immediately, plus let them know you have detailed records of everything they have said to you which will back up your allegations. Be confident - they cannot win this.

personally I would not try talking to them again there behaviour is threatening and intimidating I would ask the officer on the 101 who you can write to and complain about this bully and that is what he is!!!

My brother is a policeman and I know from him that his behaviour and conduct off duty is as important as when he is on duty, this man should not be in the job if he has no patience with children playing. its very worrying.

The stupid man should also know from his job that the way to deal with something like this is to communicate, how were you to know there was a problem if they dont tell you