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?

The neighbour is a translator. Unless it’s just documents she probably needs to be able to hear

The neighbour is a translator. Unless it’s just documents she probably needs to be able to hear

If she needs to be able to hear something then she can surely wear headphones!

Translators translate just documents by definition. She doesn't need to be able to hear anything unless she's partially sighted and works with text to speech software (I know a few translators who do this) but the OP would have presumably mentioned that.

further to my post above, if she were an interpreter (working with speech) she'd be unlikely to be dabbling in it after retirement and working from home, as it kind of requires you to be face to face with the people you're working for. Phone interpreting does exist but it's much less common.

YANBU. She is.
Btw, six is not too young to play out on a quiet cul-de-sac with his older siblings to keep an eye on him.
I can't believe PPs comments about you working from home whilst your kids play outside.
No everyone has access to affordable childcare!!!

I can't believe that some people on the thread are having a go at the OP for daring to let her children play in the street!? it's lovely for them to do so.

Well if all they ever do is translate documents explain language line....

not sure I get your point karigan? language line offers a range of services, including translating and interpreting, covering text and speech. By definition translators translate the written word, which generally doesn't entail listening to it except in unusual cases. A retiree is far more likely to be dabbling in written translation.

A translator translates text. An interpreter interprets spoken word.

Language Line offers both.

While most laypeople don't know the difference, OP's neighbour obviously works in the field, so if she said she's a translator, then she is translating text.

maybe she does multilingual transcription ;-)

Well there we go. I didn’t know that. Everyday is a school day lol

All this rubbish about how kids scream whilst playing nowadays, and they didn't use to. They always did. I can remember the teacher telling us to keep it down at school in the 1970s, and that was inside the classroom.

I do believe children should be able to play freely outside, especially in the summer. It's normal and healthy. Kicking balls against someone's house/ fence is not OK though, but the OP has nowhere said that that happens.

All this rubbish about how kids scream whilst playing nowadays, and they didn't use to

Yeah, saying "kids are so much noisier now than they were in my day" is so ridiculous it actually sounds like satire.

Do you think that in the 70s, kids would have screamed as loud as they could and kicked footballs at neighbours houses?

Many of the kids in my street did. Parents would frequently be out telling us to shut up, but it didn't make us play particularly quietly.

Equally, we had one particular neighbour who would come out, and shout and wave her fist at us at the merest hint that we even looked at her house. Even when we were actually being quiet!

There are some people who want their residential area to be totally quiet, and expect other people to fall in with that.

As an adult, I once had a neightbour coming out to yell at me because I'd slightly misjudged some parking and revved the engine briefly.

Just an accidental revving, something I rarely do. In the middle of the day, you know, when normal noises are to be expected. And this woman came out shouting at me, making far more noise as she did so. I just told her it was normal noise, then ignored her and went into my home.

So I'm not going to be jumping onto the OP and assuming she and her DCs are automatically in the wrong. Her desciptions sound like it's normal noise.

Yeah, saying "kids are so much noisier now than they were in my day" is so ridiculous it actually sounds like satire.

It does indeed, especially when posters justify their argument by assuming that all children were like they were in the 70s (presumably quiet and mouse like) whereas now they assume that all children are boisterous because they have met a child who is noisy..

Well there we go. I didn’t know that

No worries Karigan, a lot of people don't know the difference :-)

Even if I were a translator I'd need everyone to shut the fuck up, as I can't filter out background noise, and I'd be trying to hear what they were saying. I need no distractions to read.

I work full time from home and have to concentrate. I've got barking dogs on both sides of me (but not too bad), children on both sides of me and at the back, DGS staying with me and my new neighbours have been having building work done for the last 3 weeks.

It's all a bit of a noisy nuisance but I take the view that those are all normal domestic activities and sounds. It's me creating the problem (such as it is) by choosing to work from home. I keep the windows closed, grit my teeth and bear it.

I was a kid in the 70s. My mum could tell how far away we were by our screams. We were all loud. We played in the street. Everyone lived.

YABU. I do hate the mentality where having kids trumps everyone else.

Nonsense, kids play out in the summer, always have, better than being stuck in front of a screen. It's normal neighbourhood noise. Half an hour twice a day is not a compromise, it's all her way - she doesn't have the right to expect that.

YANBU. I do hate the mentality where people demanding special treatment trump those behaving normally and within the confines of the law in public places.

There's a MN type who think streets should be empty, gardens should be empty unless you are an adult reading a book and that the 'right to peaceful enjoyment of your home and garden' means almost silence at all times.

I have to quarrel with that. There is a type of adult like that. Long before the internet came along, I've had to fight with neighbours to defend the rights of children playing outside, with the added advantage they have always been other people's children.

Personally I think that children who aren't afforded their human rights by their neighbourhood are more likely to grow up to be anti-social and then the neighbours will have something to complain about.

Equally, we had one particular neighbour who would come out, and shout and wave her fist at us at the merest hint that we even looked at her house. Even when we were actually being quiet!

We had that neighbor. My brother (who was 8 at the time) fell of his bike onto her lawn and she came out screaming that he was hurting her grass. Our dog was sitting on our front lawn (on a leash) and she told us (I as about 10, DB 8) that she would kill it if it came on her lawn. She complained that we were "screaming" playing hide and seek two blocks away.

Everyone thought she was nuts and she had no friends in the neighborhood, even amongst the older, retired couples with no children.

I remember in the 1970s a neighbour complaining to my parents about the paddling pool in our garden as apparently we were noisy when we played in it. My parents thought they were very unreasonable to expect children not to play outside. The neighbours probably thought that "kids are so noisy nowadays".
The only thing that has changed since the 70s is that children don't play outside as much due to cars and that has made a certain type of person feel even more entitled to silence.