Moved into our house 4 years ago. Over time our neighbours on one side have gone from being a bit over-familiar and slightly cf-pisstaking, to being distinctly cold and unfriendly.
We've always chatted to them over the fence/in the street/ at other people's social events. We've invited them to bbqs at our house. We've offered them fruit from our garden. We've been nice to their kids - i.e. interacted with them as human beings with ideas, interests and opinions. We've been openly admiring of one parent's sporting achievements and the other's academic achievements. We've asked their opinions about things they're likely to know about. We've looked after their pets every time they've asked (a lot). I've picked up their kids from school and looked after them til the parents got home, every few weeks for a few years; always had activities, baking, talked to the kids etc.
They have always regarded us with a kind of amused tolerance as geeky academic types with no sense - they've always offered a lot of advice on how to live our lives, which we've politely accepted and always made sure we looked extremely grateful (even when we felt they had not a clue about our lives). They've kind of taken the piss a bit with the school pickups, never offering any help in return, or any payment. They also wanted to store their (3rd, very large) car on our driveway "since we weren't using the space" - we have one small car. We like having space to use most of our driveway for other things like playing with DS, so we said "that doesn't work for us, sorry, but do come back if you can't find another solution that works". Nothing else was ever said so we assumed their solution was ok.
We went overseas for 6 months recently, and paid the neighbours gardener rates to mow our lawn. We asked well in advance whether that would be something they'd consider, and said it was totally ok if they'd rather not do it as we totally understood if they would rather not spend the time on it. We explained that we were going to get a gardener to do it but figured that the degree of faff in ensuring a gardener was turning up and doing the job, was going to be a bit silly. They said it was totally fine - we paid them before we left - we came home to a well-mowed lawn. We thanked them and gave them presents from overseas, wine and chocolates and a card.
Since that point the relationship seems to have really gone off though. The wife actively avoids talking to us, and is cold, rude and distant to us if involved in a multi-neighbour conversation. The husband is generally more socially competent, so even if he really disliked us would probably be ok to hold a conversation with us, but every conversation we've had with him has involved him delivering multiple putdowns about us being stupid rich kids, too overeducated and cosseted away from having any idea about the real world to cope with life. The kids are frequently rude (they always have been) but the rudeness is targeted in a way it wasn't before - the parents seem have given the older kid a lot of ammunition of slightly bitchy things to say to us.
As far as we can tell, our sins involve parenting differently from them in that we talk to DS, spend a lot of time with him, include him in conversations or let him do his own thing as he wishes - rather than complaining about him to his face and telling him to eff off and play and then praising his sparky independence and grit behind his back, which his how the neighbours seem to parent their kids. DS also goes to the local (rather old fashioned) prep, where he's doing fine, because he can't really cope with the style of teaching at the local state school ("collaborative" - i.e. really loud and noisy and chaotic). We've explained this to the neighbours as a pragmatic choice based on what's right for DS as a child who doesn't deal well with loud environments or stress. They've been very rude about it and told us we aren't educating him to survive in the real world, we're stuffing his head with useless facts and not letting him have a childhood, - and have told other neighbours that there's clearly something wrong with DS and it's no wonder with parents like us.
Are these neighbours just dicks or are we selfish idiots? Or a bit of both?