First day of holidays and neighbour complained about children playing outside

[smileycath]

My new neighbour called round this afternoon to complain about my children playing outside. She is retired but works from home as a translator and needs to concentrate and my children's screaming and football games are making this impossible.

I feel gutted. It's the first day of the summer holidays. I'm a lone parent to three boys aged 6, 8 and 9. We don't have a garden and it's only recently that I've felt able to let them go out with friends on the street. They play on the road below and I can keep an eye on them from the window. They are a bit noisy but there's never more than half a dozen of them and they're not a nightmare.

She suggested that we have a compromise and that they be allowed to play out for half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the afternoon. I couldn't agree to this and she obviously thought I was being unreasonable but honestly when the weather is nice I don't want them stuck in front of screens.

She said they should be in the park and that the street wasn't a playground. Fair enough and we do go to the park a lot and I try to take them out at some point every day but some days we're at home for longer periods and I want them to play out. I'm self-employed working from home too and have to squeeze in a few hours each day and this is often when they play out.

She argued they were old enough to go to the park on their own but my youngest is only six and my eldest is slightly autistic and certainly not able to look after the others. Plus there's a road to cross and somebody was recently stabbed in the park during the day!

My next door neighbour overheard our conversation on the doorstep and said FFS but his children are older and go further afield now. I feel like this woman is not going to let it drop and I hate confrontation. What can I do?

Sounds like she was stressed and your kids were just in line of sight.

I WFH and some noises get to me sometime and sometimes not. Depends on what I’m working on.

Why not invite NDN round for a glass of wine one evening and get to know her a bit better. When you’re friendly with someone you tend to be more accepting of things.

That said, the noise that gets to me is the trampolining two doors up. Goes on for hours, and hours, and hours.... Every day after school. I’m hoping the child doing it is working towards Olympic standard and will win a medal for team GB

Oh scrumpy. Yes. BECAUSE THEY ARE CHILDREN. honestly.

I'm not sure I could get too wound up about kids playing but am interested that no one has mentioned that the Highways Act 1980 that states:

If a person plays at football or any other game on a highway to the annoyance of a user of the highway he is guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding [F3level 1 on the standard scale].

In many cases "a user of the highway" seems to have been interpreted to cover those people who live on the street. The children in this example would appear to be acting outside the law on this?

I live next to a school and work from home. Obviously they are off school now but I get noise all year round. It doesn't bother me and I'm used to it but its not constantly and they are supervised. It sounds as though you are not parenting them and letting them out without supervision. A 9 year old should not be looking after their younger siblings. Of course you let them play out but not all the time. They will soon get bored if you are not taking them out or organizing daycare. If my neighbour complained about my kids I would try a compromise.

I work from home. Live in a quiet (traffic wise) cul-de-sac. There are always kids playing in my street during the school holidays and on light evenings. I think it's lovely. I do occasionally arrange to work somewhere else during the summer holidays - usually once we're about half way through the holiday as that's when they all start falling out with each other! Their parents are mostly pretty good at taking them inside for an hour or two if they start to get v boisterous or argue.

They move out of the way when cars come and sometimes cars just have to wait for them to move. It really annoys me that nowadays we assume the car is king and our kids should all stay inside to avoid being run over.

It drive my ds mad that I would only let him use a soft ball in our cul de sac, when his mates were allowed harder balls. The main reason I had this rule was I didn't want anyone coming to me with a damage claim for their cars made by a hard ball. And I didn't want mine damaged either. By default, all the kids had to use a soft ball if my ds was out playing with them, or he wouldn't be able to play with them. I managed to get him through his childhood without broken windows or damaged cars to pay for. He didn't like it but they went to the park as soon as they were old enough.

I'm surprised as a translator she's not already wearing headphones to cut out background noise. But that's besides the point!

YNBU. Kids should be able to play outside during the holidays. Working from home is her choice and she has to accept that life must go on around her. Our house is near a nursery and the sound of the children shouting and screaming outside never bothers me when I'm working (I'm at FT homeworker, too). They're having fun, FGS!

I would baulk at a ball being kicked persistently against a wall though, that can be really irritating. But other than that, let the kids carry on as they are, OP.

I suspect the only thing the council would do is criticise her for running a business from home.

This is crap trap. Why do people keep saying it? The council would advise her on how to bring a complaint and what constitutes noise issues. Whether she'd get anywhere or not remains to be seen. Most people who work do some work from home and on making a noise complaint would not be interrogated as to their work status and permits etc. Has it be mentioned whether or not the OP is permitted to work from her home by the council?

clap not crap obvs

She is lucky she doesn't live near a school, especially a secondary. We do. I also used to live next to a secondary when I was growing up and apart from all the usual noise (we coud hear the bell ringing, the pupils shouting and playing) there were pupils being picked up on bikes and scooters so you can imagine how noise that would be! But then she might have decided to buy a house away from any school for this exact reason.

I don't think you're being unreasonable but I can sympathise with the woman.

My children play in my garden and can be noisy. If they are being screechy for some reason (usually an argument) they get a couple of warnings to stop the screeching/yelling but if they don't stop they have to come inside and won't be allowed i pads or tv. They usually stop the screeching!

Anyway my point is just be mindful of what they are doing when they're playing and make them come in if they're being too noisy or they're arguing.

I'm not saying they should be quiet at all but they need to learn to be considerate.

@ScrumpyCrack why bizarre?

As far as I'm aware council aren't bothered about children making noise, they do however crack down on people running businesses from home.

I think you will find that "childrens noise" is considered to be "normal"

I work from home and right at the end of my garden is a childrens' nursery (we've been here 11 years and the nursery for 3). I work on intensive projects meaning I have to concentrate and you know what I do? I either move to a different room if the noise is loud, or I put on headphones. If she wants total silence, she needs to go to the library.

I would not let them play ball games in the street thats not very pratical Thats best left for the park where they can play games to there hearts content

This 'all the neighbourhood children playing out together in the street' from age 5 or 6 scene, describes my childhoood in the end of 70s / early 80s.

We did it on summer evenings, at weekends and in school hols to an extent - though that depended whose house I was based at, whether they had a garden, a cul de sac etc.

Two things though:

1. The prevalent culture was that children respected and obeyed adults - all adults. So when random unknown neighbours asked us to pipe down / move along a bit / stop kicking a ball against their wall / stop letting our balls hit their car / chalking on outside walls / whatever - whether their request seemed reasonable or not - we obeyed.

It wouldn't have occured to us not to and the expectation was that not doing so would have led to an angry neighbour demanding to know where we lived, going round and having a word with our parents. Then, us being told off or temporarily grounded. It's possible our parents might have tried to reason with an unreasonably wound-up neighbour but we didn't know or have any expectation of that.

2. Child road deaths were massively, massively higher than they are now.

If you think your dc are 'learning road sense' by playing on a road, you're deluding yourself. They are learning to treat a road as a playground and gaining a false sense of safety. Residents will know they're there. As with all road use, you can think you're being as sensible as you like but once you're on a road, it's the random idiot driver who will get you. Whether they do or not is pure luck.

She may not even get complete silence in the library. Ours has a large children’s section with lots of holiday activities (and activities for babies and toddlers during term time). Not to mention adult study sessions, talks etc. There is no quiet area. Most libraries in the county except the really big ones are the same. Ours is very popular.

Yes they do crack down on people running business from home but that is when there are multiple employees/clients potentially visiting etc all things which need to be checked and permits for

NOT one person freelancing from home

And a previous poster is right the use of highways would also be in play

Both sides have to be reasonable and it isn’t reasonable for it to be 12 hours a day because it is convenient to the poster and damn everyone else

If you chose to "work form home" then you abandon all your rights to a calm work environment.

It doens't matter about the individual OP's individual children, it's just a circumstance of not working from an office in a commercial part of the town/city.

She's slightly bonkers to expect no annoying noise outside of her house in a residential area, inevitably there will be all sorts of disruption and noise. She's lucky she doesn't have neighbours with dogs, trampolines, violin practice, constant deliveries for a building project etc.

If she doesn't want to be disturbed then it's her responsibility to make sure that she has a calm working environment; and during the school holidays that might mean arranging to work from her employer's office, taking her laptop to a library or cafe, or renting a property for a couple of weeks in an isolated area. She could change the room she works in, buy noise cancelling head-phones, or practice meditation. What she can't do is expect to have control over a residential area that she chooses to work in.

That being said, our very quiet cul-de-sac is full of small children running around and playing (I counted 11 yesterday) and some of them are far too small to be out there unsupervised (three of them are under 4). I do think that 6 is too young to be out without an adult out there watching, and that kicking a ball against a wall and screaming are two of the most irritating things on the planet.

@HollyGibney in my direct experience it's not "claptrap"

Years ago I had a client who was charged with a harassment offence having made life difficult for a mother of children whom she objected to playing in their garden. It culminated with her pouring bleach into the garden hence criminal charges. Ironically, as in this case, she worked at home running a hairdressing business. The council became quite interested in that and as I recall she got in some bother with back payment of business taxes or similar (it was a long time ago and exact details hazy but she requested it be used in mitigation so I did see the paperwork once upon a time)

Most councils can and do prohibit people from "running businesses" from home. I was quite specific in my wording because of course "working from home" is not the same thing.

If someone complains about noise because they're trying to work it's not inconceivable that might trigger an enquiry. Guess it depends on how busy your council is.

I think it depends on what the sounds are.

We have a lot of kids on this road and they often play in their gardens and have friends over. I have no problem with the noise of them playing when it is at a managed level. That is, when the noise gets too loud you hear the parents coming out to tell them to quiet down and they do.
But it is extremely annoying when the kids are left to play out all day unsupervised and they are constantly shrieking and screaming at the top of their lungs and kicking a ball with gusto against your fence.
It makes it very difficult to concentrate on work. In this heat it is unreasonable to expect your neighbour to close windows and this may be part of the problem. As normally this could be done to minimise noise.
I'll probably get flamed for this but in my experience 3 boys playing together is loud. Can they not play in the garden for a bit and then you could take them to the park to run around?
You were however very unreasonable to suggest that she goes to the library but I can see that you may have got flustered by the unexpected confrontation.
Could you leave things to cool off and go round and try to have another nicer chat with her? Explain that you're sorry it has interrupted her work but that it is difficult to keep 3 lively kids from making noise and that you will try to manage it better. But equally explaining that 30 minutes won't cut it as they need to burn off energy.

I'm really surprised by the amount of people who think six is too young to be playing out. I wouldn't have thought twice about that at all.

I'm with your neighbour, the road/street shouldn't be used as a playground. The sound of a ball thumping and kids screaming is really antisocial outside someone's house!

I think you need to go along with her suggestion of 30 mins twice a day, so she can get on with her work. And take them to the park yourself at least once a day so they can burn off energy. Completely unacceptable and selfish to let them use the road for playing!

We don't even know this woman is "running a business". She's retired and does some translating. Is the OP also "running a business" when she does work at home? I posted earlier up say that I supported the OP in the noise issue, it's just kids and personally I would never complain about this, but not the playing on the street, so I have no axe to grind here. I just don't think going on about well she'd be trouble herself is particularly accurate or helpful, it's all rather defensive and that kind of attitude could massively escalate the situation.

I don't see the issue posters have with playing in the road? I lived in a cul de sac as a child and during the holidays all the kids from every house used to cone out and play. Ages ranged from 5-10. It was great fun!!