Bloody loud kids in the communal pool all day, everyday.

[DavidBowiesNumber1]

We've recently moved into a new house on a small development - 20 houses, at present only 10 sold, of those 10 only 5 of us are permanent residents.
Not in the UK.
Up until about 3 weeks ago everything was peaceful, harmonious, pretty idyllic. Then the "holiday homers" arrived.
Now, out of the 5 nonresident households, 3 have lots of children ranging in ages of about 1 to 13 years old. Approx' 9 children between them but every day there are friends arriving to spend the day (and sometime night) at the pool.
Now I'm all for kids enjoying themselves and its lovely to see them doing something other than sitting indoors in front of a tv/tablet/phone/games console but AIBU in thinking that the parents (who are rarely at the pool) should A) be keeping an eye on them and B) be telling them to hush down a bit?
All we can hear from morning 'til night (up to 12.15am this morning) is the children shouting, screaming, jumping in the pool etc.
It's incredibly hot here (40c+ in the day, never dips below 32c at night) so all doors and windows are open therefore the noise carries everywhere.
If we want to use the pool we have to dodge bombing children/passing li-los/random balls and floats along with said 'DC'.
We would just like to enjoy our downtime and relax. Is that too much to ask?

LoveInTokyo I gave up on reading maths posted a while back, around the same time I gave up the will to live

Argh, bloody name change fail again!

Posts not posted. FFS, I blame the heat!

You think that if a child dive bombs on top of an adult who is minding their own business swimming in the pool, it is the adult’s fault for not moving out of the way, regardless of the circumstances. (Even if the adult is 85, I assume.)

Your hypothetical breaststroking swimmer of any age knows there are children about, can see them clearly apparently, and still insists on swimming in diving range. Your swimmer is an idiot.

If you can't 'mind your own business' as a diving 5 year old then what gives you the right as an 85 year old to mind your own business and use the pool with no regard for how other people are using it, or where?

Is it the fact that the swimmer is older that you can't get past?

Nobody using a pool can just 'mind their own business'. To do so is unsafe.

And really, ad hominem attacks?

Scraping the bottom of the barrel when you know your argument is ridiculous.

Only 1 ridiculous argument I can see here Math

In most communal pools it usually states no diving anyway.

Parents should supervise there dc so they are not jumping in when it is dangerous to do so.

EVERYWHERE in the pool is “within diving range” you idiot.

If I said you shouldn’t drive ANYWHERE on the roads where there was a risk of some dickhead in an Audi ramming into the back of you, you’d say I was being totally unreasonable.

And yet, that is basically your argument.

Lol @mathanxiety hijacking the thread with long nonsensical posts about aquatic recreation.

Surely diving range depends on the size of the pool, LoveinTokyo?

Unless you are suggesting that every child of 7 or 8 is going to be able to take a flying leap of twenty yards.

If I said you shouldn’t drive ANYWHERE on the roads where there was a risk of some dickhead in an Audi ramming into the back of you, you’d say I was being totally unreasonable.

And yet, that is basically your argument

Your analogy doesn't hold water.
If one could assume that Audi drivers all drove blindfold then the advice to avoid driving where there were Audi drivers would be sensible. It would also make a lot of sense to watch out for Audis and take evasive action. The analogy here is adults taking sensible action to avoid collision with other users of the pool.

It's akin to defensive driving, which I am sure we all support. Defensive driving involves assessing the risk in a mature way, and not insisting on your right to drive in any particular way in any driving conditions. Same goes for adults using a pool. You use common sense and you swim defensively because safety should be your number one priority, your safety and the safety of others.

It would also be sensible to keep Audi drivers who insist on driving blindfold off the roads. These would be analogous to swimmers who apparently can't see other pool users floating across their path.

No mate, they would be analogous to children whose parents haven’t taught them to look before they jump.

So therefore other users make sure they are not unsighted and can take evasive action, or they anticipate how far a jumping child might be able to travel in the air and pick a lane further out in the pool. Defensive swimming, if you will.

It really is often possible to anticipate spots where children are more likely to be jumping in and to avoid them. In my experience, anywhere near a ladder is a hotspot. You could think of it as an area where you know there is an intersection with no stop sign or yield sign.

No, you and only you are responsible for watching your goddamn kids.

And because we all know that sometimes even with the best will in the world a parent will be distracted, and sometimes little Johnny will choose that exact moment to jump, and we all know that sometimes what we say to little Johnny will go in one ear and out the other so he may jump regardless of how much reminding his parents have done, we are sensible about where we try to do our breaststroking.

We are sensible because we are adults and we have many years of experience under our belts. Little Johnny cannot be counted upon to be sensible or to listen because he is a child.

As adults, we are also conscious that pools can be dangerous places for children and we do not wish to add to the hazards. So defensive swimming is the way to go, and we find that not getting our knickers in a twist over other people's parenting makes our holiday all the more enjoyable.

It’s not “with the best will in the world” though, is it? Parents these days simply neglect to teach their children basic consideration.

I was using a hotel pool last week (in the health and fitness suite, in a city hotel aimed mainly at business travellers) and I got out and left because of two children running riot. Their mother was sitting on a sun lounger “supervising” them, but didn’t look up from her iPhone once or make the slightest effort to control them.

Well Math I'm not anxious about an Audi falling from the sky and landing on me on the motorway

But to use your road analogy someone already in the pool has right of way over someone not in it

It’s not “with the best will in the world” though, is it? Parents these days simply neglect to teach their children basic consideration

Well, you can choose to believe whatever you want to, LoveinTokyo about the proverbial 'parents these days' - but you have no way of proving what you believe, and you have nothing to gain from believing what you believe except indigestion and an afternoon seething in your room instead of relaxing somewhere.

If you were to adopt more of a 'benefit of the doubt' attitude towards other parents' choices - and even towards the behaviour of children, because one person's normal fun is another person's 'running riot' after all - you might find yourself having more of a zen experience all round. As an example, instead of doing that you apparently spent your time in a pool checking what a mother was doing with her iPhone (checking pretty closely, if you knew it was an iPhone). You clearly also thought the children did not belong in the hotel geared to business travelers, so that added to your sense of outrage. You could have chosen to relax about all of that instead.

We all choose how we react to what we see and experience. We all choose our perceptions too - only you can decide what it is you are seeing and experiencing. Sometimes what we see will only reinforce our preconceived notions, and if our preconceived notions are making us miserable we should probably address them, because choosing misery is only going to hurt ourselves.

DingDongDenny:
Nobody in the pool has the right of way, certainly not by dint of being there first, a silly thought.
Everyone in a pool has the responsibility to look out for the safety of others. You cannot police that though, any more than you can police the matter of who got there first.

You should not expect excited children to be watching out for everyone else's safety all the time because they are children and that is expecting too much of them. So if you are interested in safety, your own or others, you the adult (analogous to the non-Audi driver) should look out for others, and take evasive action if something dangerous is about to happen, and you can anticipate it. You nearly always can anticipate what will happen in a pool when there are children around.

Just read the first line of your post again. (If you want people to read the whole thing then you really need to make your point much more concisely.)

This is simply my observation. It has become so rare to see parents actively teaching their children manners and consideration that when they do it is a talking point.

That is all.

I see math is still pointedly ignoring the fact that it's not just adults who like to swim. I know several children who like swimming and would be just as much at risk from other children jumping in etc, but according to math they can't be 'normal' because children are only 'normal if they are shrieking and leaping around the pool.

Who enforces the rules? You need to contact them.

I don't know how you managed to get that out of my posts, HappyHarridan.

Is it a case of a long post or a short little attention span, I wonder...