Are you still letting your DC play out with neighbours kids?

[LegoBloodyHurts]

Are you still letting your kids play out with neighbours kids? Seems to be in my neighbourhood the kids are carrying on as normal, and out on the streets together. Mine are home as I won’t allow it.

My daughter's school sent a memo round that children of key workers seen playing with other children would have the place removed. Seems parents were quite happy to let it go on

I walk my dog along a riverbank behind my cul de sac. Half way along this walk is a wooded area with dunes. Every day there are a significant number of primary aged children , on their bikes, playing on these dunes and not adhering to the 2 metre rule whatsoever. Not a single adult to be seen.
Would love to report but would be seen as a member of the Stasi if I did.
I despair.

No. DD was out playing on front then next time I looked she was throwing and catching
her ball with neighbours younger child (6). Obviously I brought DD in straight away, read her riot act and made sure she was decontaminated. Said child has knocked on our door a couple of times to see if DD can come out. I’ve just had to yell no thankyou through the door, as I’ve no idea what her own parents have told her about what’s going on.

I'm horrified

And to add insult to injury getting their kids to put painted rainbow pictures in the windows and clapping at 8 on a Thursday takes the absolute piss!

I’m not. But. My kids go to school three days a week because of my work. As do the kids over the road. When at school they play freely and without any distance. I struggle to rationally explain why that’s not ok at home.

We go through this routine of walking them to school saying ‘keep your distance!’ And then watching them run off hand in hand once we drop them off.

Rationally of course them playing together at home creates no additional risk than is already created by them playing together at school. But I don’t allow it because it’s against the rules. But I do wonder if we should just go with it!

I do think we probably should have followed other countries that allowed different definitions of household. So you could define a household as you and the neighbours if you wanted to. Norway allowed each child to have a buddy they could always play with. I like that idea

You're not at all unreasonable. It's beyond me why people allow children to play in the street at the best of times, never mind now.

Seems alright round here for children being kept home. I'm loving it, usually I have to put up with half the villages feral children making a racket and kicking a football outside my house, occassionally hitting cars with their ball whilst damaging my hedge (the little shits made a hole by constantly going between my garden and next doors garden through the hedge. I blocked it up with chicken wire and they had the cheek to complain to me!).

Not at all. Next door neighbour keeps encouraging her children to 'play catch' over the fence with our 4 year old though

@BeanCalledPickle......Why increase exposure for fun? It's bad enough we have to for work.

Nope, but it isn't stopping the rest of the street. 6 or 7 kids from 4/5 different households all out screeching all over the place. Play fighting, sharing food. I wouldn't mind but one of the parents started lockdown keeping her kids in and complained in FB about how hard it is keeping him in when his friends are out. Lots of people told her she was doing the right things, her neighbour friends fell out with her for the indirect post and now he's out there with them all! I'm not reporting it's the kind of street where they'll figure out who did it and one of the dads thinks he owns the street.

No

My kids haven't been out playing with anyone since the day schools closed and it will stay that way until the schools reopen.

I live in a apartment building. We let the smaller kids play in one apartment together for a hour each week.

My kids have never played out with the neighbours' kids, they don't have friends in our street and never really played out before. They have always played online with their friends or gone to the park with them instead. Now they play online

No because I'm not an idiot.

Absolutely not i wouldn't dream of it. Why are people so stupid!!

Absolutely not. But as one poster early on very delicately put it, there is 'a definite demographic slant' to the type of young male teens roaming our town in gangs on their cycles, no helmets of course.

But as one poster early on very delicately put it, there is 'a definite demographic slant' to the type of young male teens roaming our town in gangs on their cycles, no helmets of course.

There’s a definite demographic slant to the kids still hanging out together here as well. Though I get the impression it’s probably the opposite to what you are inferring for your area.

The kids with too much cash in their pocket are a pest here. “Coincidentally” all going to the shop or ice cream shop at the same time. They’ve been shifted from the tennis courts umpteen times and the parents seem to find their “rebel raising” highly amusing

dyscalculic
You must be winding us up?
Or are you not in the UK?

I feel really sorry for people with small children who live in areas where people are ignoring the rules. In the nearly 4 weeks of lockdown I don’t think I’ve seen anyone breaking any rules at all. Our neighbours kids are only playing in their back gardens so my kids can see that everyone is doing the same thing. I think I would be brutally honest if my kids asked me and would be secretly they would tell kids they saw on the walk or over the fence. ‘Those kids are allowed out because either their parents are very stupid and don’t understand the rules or because they don’t care about their children and other people and don’t mind if they die’
Obviously it would cause a shit storm if they said something but thats because the truth hurts!

dyscalculic where is the logic in that? Do you think they can’t catch it/spread it in an hour? And if you accept they can (they can), why limit it to an hour?

I did think my neighbours would ignore it (four families with roughly 4/5 children each who on sunny weekends, play together in the road all day, totally unsupervised, usually with balls bouncing off the cars...). To be fair, they're complying. I've seen them out as individual families, supervised, which has reduced the noise and the number of balls flying about. It's a big relief, as I'm WFH.

The only exception is a 2 year old who runs around and grabs everyone she passes. She likes to stop by my garden gate and wave her arms through it at my cats. She gets cross when I stand 2m back from her (which keeps the cats out of her reach). Her parents just shrug and say she's very sociable and is missing having visitors.

@BeanCalledPickle - I'd actually be calling the school and clarifying why they aren't putting social distancing measures in to place! They absolutely should be - children should be staying 2m away from each other.

I’m telling my kids to stay away from the fences in the back garden but my next door neighbours are allowing their kids to climb up on the fences and hang over into our garden. Plus one of the kids is coughing and one of the parents is a key worker you would think they would know better. It’s been making me really but then I feel sorry for the children because the parents just play computer games all day and give the kids no attention. The kids also tried playing catch over the fence, I put a swift stop to that. YANBU to keep the kids inside.

CaryStoppins the childminder looks after at least 2 different households of kids. Sometime separate days, sometimes altogether.

She has a big garden the kids could play football in and chalk. Why should they do it in a public place when the kids who actually live on this road don’t.

She also has regular visits in the house from her own grandchild and yes I wish I had a life that didn’t involve sitting looking out the window