To allow my kids to scooter in the shared flats driveway

[User5827372728]

12 flats, one shared driveway, electric gate at the end onto the main road. Cars parked on one side of the driveway.

Is it unreasonable to allow my kids to use this driveway to scooter about 30 min a day? It means they are scootering passed someone’s lounge and kitchen and another flats bedroom. It’s usually around 5pm.

One neighbour ( penthouse) isn’t impressed.

Horribly rude, disruptive and intrusive for the neighbours! Scooters (and kids) are noisy and a car park isn’t a skate park, supervised or not.

Why can’t you take them somewhere appropriate to scooter where they won’t upset the neighbours?

@Swearwolf

I feel like this thread is probably split into people who have lived in flats with children and people who haven't. We lived in a flat until mine were 5 and 2 and honestly, the park and a garden are not the same. I would do it. If you live in a flat you expect noise from the neighbours, and children scooting isn't an unreasonable level of noise. No worse than the lady downstairs with the barking Alsatian or the young flat sharers meeting for a drink on the front flower bed. Go for it I think.

I lived in a flat and my neighbors kid skateboarding drove me mad. Given that it’s a driveway it’s not a big area so whoever is in their living room is hearing it constantly for 30 mins. I’m not saying they should never do it but be considerate, limit the days and time of it by swapping it with other activities.

Our lounge can’t be scootered passed; but we face the garages so people walk there a lot and it’s where most the cars turn around to leave.

My neighbour above WFT with his windows open and I can hear his 8 hours of work zooms a day. But I’ve not said anything about that.

I think if you were the flat which bordered onto the driveway that would be really annoying. And you’ll get the blame for any damage to the cars.

As long as you are there supervising them I see no harm

@User5827372728

Well at 5pm no one is usually in their bedroom!

Obviously I don’t want my kids to get run over, and I’m outside supervising the whole time. There’s about 7 cars parked along the side, and it’s very obvious if a car is about to move or drive into the block.

In the nicest possible way, I am in my bedroom at 5pm at the moment, working.

And as someone else said, car parks are meant to be transient.

So the person in the flat can't have their evening meal in peace and that doesn't bother you ?

@StrangeToSee

I do, for most the day. And 3 days a week they are at child care 7.30-5.30

When I lived in a flat with 2 kids they played outside, we were ground floor. They probably made a bit of noise, but no more so than the guy above his who played I'm his electric guitar, or the guy that tinkered with his motorbike, or the girl whose flat was always the place for the after party. No one complained it's part and parcel of life in a flat.

Gated community & penthouse - why would anyone with kids even move in somewhere like that? Kind of like retirement villages filled with kids all holidays and weekends. That's not why people move there. It's for peace and quiet.

I would let the kids do it right up to the moment when a neighbour expressed unhappiness with it. Then I would be a good neighbour by knocking it off and finding another solution.

@Mantlemoose

We only call it the penthouse as a puss take as he lives at the top and likes to think he owns the whole building/communal areas.

They are very very active kids, and on non working days we are out at the park or wherever for at least 5 hours a day. Sometimes we get home and it’s a bit early for tea so I let them scooter to burn off the excess energy. They are 3&5. Not much movements on the cars really, they tend to either be parked and stay there, so far they’ve never hit a car! They also don’t shout or make loud noises other than scootering!

Scootering on tarmac is itself a loud irritating, rattling noise.
Just because they haven’t hit a car ‘so far’ doesn’t mean they won’t. Just the sight of a 3 and 5 year old scootering around parked cars will make a lot of owners nervous about damage. The gates are to protect the cars from being stolen/damaged not to keep kids contained!

I think people will complain to the management committee quite swiftly if you continue to do it. Sounds like they get plenty of exercise on other days so I’m not sure why they need to disrupt the community on non-working days.

You’ve already said the people in the penthouse don’t like it, why do think others won’t mind?

Having a gate to the car park doesn’t mean it’s posh or people live there to be away from children lol. I have a relative who lives in a similar place. There is an electric gate on their car park so that people don’t park there and walk into town, not because it’s an exclusive development.

@PattyPan

Yea we have it cause of the local area, there’s a lot of sex workers down the lane near the flats and cars drive into our block looking.

I'm pretty sure the kids doing similar around my block of flats damaged my car. It was fine, I went out 2 hours after they had been playing and the car had a couple of handle bar sized dents. Obviously I couldn't prove it so had to suck up the costs. There is a park nearby. I think their parents are dicks.

Op..would you like other kids scooting past your windows and around your car. Yabu. Take your children to the park where its safer for them.

I think this is absolutely fine.

I hate the miserable attitude to kids in this country - when we moved to our flat with kids that age the American neighbours specifically encouraged them to play in the shared hallway outside the two flats. The noise with kids crashing about the hard surfaces was quite something, but only ever for short periods and the neighbours wanted to hear kids enjoying themselves.

Half an hour at 5pm is nothing.

Ok for half an hour or so.
I am in building with same amount of flats. There is a communal garden which the ground floor residents tend to use mostly not exclusively. But the noise can go on until after it gets dark. With under 10's playing out there. Sometimes I wish it would stop about 7pm. Lol

@londonrach

I actually wouldn’t mind

Personally it would irritate the shit out of me, but then next doors kid and his friends running up and down the road piss me off (it sounds like a constant heard of echoing elephants). I don’t say anything though.

My sister used to let her kids play on their bikes in the street until she landed up with the repair bill for a neighbours damaged car.
My DH’s previous car has also been sctratched by a kids handle bars but we couldn’t prove it. So I’d not be thrilled by seeing children playing on scooters near my car, but don’t think I’d say anything.

Why are you asking aibu if you're then disagreeing with anyone that doesn't think the same as you?

Children are allowed to exist and make noise in communal spaces (despite what some self centred people think)

Early doors and late at night older kids need to learn to pipe down

Younger kids folk just have to learn to live with the crying or joyful screams before emotional regulation of a thing.
You were young once too

One persons desire for quiet doesn’t trump another persons desire to use the space you share for their enjoyment.
Even if the other person is a child

@londonrach

Op..would you like other kids scooting past your windows and around your car. Yabu. Take your children to the park where its safer for them.

Abelism at its finest. Ah Mumsnet

Fuck that yabu