AIBU to ask again for neighbours to move their trampoline

[Jynxed]

My well being and happiness are being severely impacted by my neighbours noisy children. They scream, argue, shout and kick footballs at the fence all day long. They only have one volume and it’s loud. The whole family just shout at each other. Last year they got an enormous trampoline and positioned it right up against (their) fence bordering our garden. We are a terrace row, but each house is staggered, so our back doors are not aligned. Our back door and patio area is about a third of the way up their lawn. We were aghast when the neighbours chose to position their trampoline right in line with our back door and patio table, where I also have lots of pots and plants. When the kids use the trampoline they stand higher than the fence and stare straight into our kitchen window, and they used to call out to us all the time until we asked them to stop. The noise and shouting makes the patio unusable, and as I write this yet another ball has come flying over. I darent go and look as I heard something smash. We can no longer eat or read at the table because of the noise and the risk of a ball hitting you on the head. We did ask them not to put the trampoline there, and brought them round to show them how much it over shadowed our patio and removed all privacy. They declined to reposition it saying that there was nowhere else in their 80ft garden they could put it. Given that there is nothing in their garden apart from lawn and garden toys this is blatantly untrue, so I have no idea why it cannot move a few feet away from our patio door. What do I do now? Ask again? Beg and cry? Puncture every ball that comes over and wrecks a plant? Write a letter? Build a cage over our table to protect ourselves? How can I make them understand what they are doing to us? For context, I do have kids myself, all teenagers now, so I do understand that children need to play. However mine were brought up not to scream and shout, and I would not have dreamt of refusing a reasonable request from neighbours such as this.

It’s not playing I object to , it’s deafening screaming, shouting and fighting, using the trampoline as a platform for staring into our house, and ball games on the trampoline, which is higher than the fence, raining balls on our head when sitting at our outside table. It is fairly normal to have a patio outside the back door. We have started sitting in the veg patch, although cannot eat there, and one day last year sat in our 2m square front garden because we could not hear ourselves think in the back garden. Do you not think there should be any restrictions on noise or activity in terrace gardens?

Neighbours like this can make your life hell, you have my sympathy.

Why does she need to move her patio? She literally has to move her chair

Walk around outside in the nude. Play Celine Dion’s “My heart will go on” on a loop. Place lots wind chimes on the fence.

I’d speak to them again and say everything you’ve said to us and ask them please to consider helping you out.
If not:
Birdseed at night
High pitched deterrent when they’re out there
Stink bombs in that area till they move it further down??

And the noise is just what comes with kids.

I wholeheartedly refute this claim. I have kids and they do not terrorise the neighbours. The only thing I can deduce from your defensiveness is that your own kids are feral, and you know it.

Arrgghh! Shouty children are the bane of my existence, and it’s in stereo as both neighbours have children/grandchildren that are incapable of talking to each other.

Laughter, chatter, even squeals of delight is infinitely preferable to the shouting and screeching at each other. Mind you, the parents on both sides are incapable of talking, just a cacophony of noise. Never laughter. Just angry shouting.

The worst one has five children, one of which was being dangled out of the first floor window last summer (social services & police are well aware of issues as they have used corporal punishment on their children, it’s a shit show), and the council are involved with the ever growing pile of broken things stacked in their front garden - you can see it on Google Earth ffs - but still the chaos continues.

I’ll not mention the pumping music when the parents want to have some saucy time - you can hear her over the tunes - whilst the kids shout & scream at each other in the bedroom that adjoins ours. Although if I had to choose which ghastly sound next to my bed I prefer, I’ll choose the kids anytime.

I just don’t get it. I have no idea why some parents don’t understand that if you are a gobby shite, you children will also be gobby shites. Which behaviour then leads to more shouting by the parents, which makes the kids shout even louder.

They did have a trampoline, which they dragged out onto the green in front of our houses, which got nicked one day. Unsurprisingly, but to the relief of all our other neighbours.

The other side is a little better, but I guess they have to shout to be heard over the roar of their sex pond.

I’m really not a grumpy old bugger, but the noise is way over the top! My kids weren’t angels, but fuck me, they were taught not to shout & rage because it would disturb the neighbours in their gardens!

A little consideration goes a long way to being a great neighbour.

Apologies, I have no solution to your problem OP, but if one parent reading this goes outside & teaches their kids good garden etiquette, then you neighbours will thank you!

If you like where you live and don’t want to move then erect your own fence on your side and make it 2m high and attach lots of lovely climbers.

or move.

Selfish parents. You won’t be able to reason with them they don’t care.

Id be installing a solid pagoda with a roof a trellis their side. Lots of thorny climbing roses. Loud Classic FM. Everything coming over would go straight in the bin. A water feature that sounds like a peeing police horse. Wind chimes of the large bamboo variety. Bamboo in pots.

Can I come and design all this for you….

Perhaps do some enthusiastic watering of your fence with a hose when they start jumping and screaming on it. When they object say, sorry, you are really close to my fence and I need to water my plants...

move your seating and stop being such a martyr.

She can hardly just pick up her back patio and move it, ffs.

Nettle seed better than bird seed

They are, but it's a myth that only kids can hear them. They do make you shift though

Escalation begets escalation-in-return.

You're entitled to be upset: if they don't know how upset you are, they can't do anything to help.

How about telling them all, again, face-to-face, across the garden fence, the effect it has on you? Maybe, keep a diary of the problems and refresh your memory about it when you speak.

Can you make common-cause with their other-side terrace-neighbours in a joint approach?

Is there a community event (gardening club, foodbank, lawnmower-sharing, facebook-group, neighbouhood-watch, street-parking-group, shopping-caring-volunteers, refugee-support-group, ...) in which you could meet on neutral territory all be on the same side ?

Give the children Bible tracts and sweeties. Ask them to join in prayer.

Des O’Connor records at full blast?

Can you get one of those umbrellas that you can angle? Or those sun screen things like this sort of thing

Surely playing loud music & mosquito noises will lead to escalation & retaliation

Your neighbours are arseholes OP - unfortunately some people just are. They're antisocial and they don't give a shit. We always consider how choices we make in our garden will impact our neighbours and deliberately don't place things up against our fence or next to areas of their garden where they like to sit and they are equally courteous to us, which is much appreciated, but you've asked nicely, even shown them the impact that their trampoline is having and they've done nothing, so you can ask again, but I wouldn't expect any improvement. They're just c*nts, I'm afraid!

Your neighbours appear complete arseholes but I don't think being antagonistic and escalating things is going to help.
You'll just get to an untenable level. All the people suggesting retaliation tactics wouldn't do that if it was them in the same position, they just want the entertainment relief that doesn't affect them in the slightest, so I strongly suggest you don't listen.

Have you considered planting a fast growing hedge? My parents had a lovely quiet neighbour for years but then a young family moved in. Same problems as you: noise and inquisitive kids climbing the fence to peer in windows. My father had a Hawthorn hedge planted. It is fast growing and can be bought in 'instant hedge' sectons. He now has a 12ft hedge which is about 2.5ft wide. It needs a good trim every year which he gets a man in to do but he only planted about 3 metres of it that extends from the back door against the original fence and that blocks off the worst of the kids noise and their view into the back windows of the house.

Thank you for listening to me and helping me to think it through. I have decided to bag up the various balls in the garden and take them round, with photos of the damage caused and the various pieces of broken pot. I will ask them again to move their trampoline, at least further away from the fence if not further away from our patio area. I will tell them if they decline again that in future I will destroy every ball or frisbee which comes over the fence. I will also feel free to allow my kids to loudly play any music they damn well like out of my kitchen door. If I cannot sit outside my back door then I won’t enable them to either. Meanwhile I will look at the feasibility of paving over my small veg plot and moving my table and chairs there, and growing veg in pots outside the back door instead. If we cannot use it then maybe we could covert it into a container garden instead. And at the same time I will wish every evil down on their heads - if they cannot control primary school kids they are going to have a great time when they become teens! That will be the time to move!

Ursula - it’s their boundary and ironically there was a lovely hedge there before they move in, but they ripped it out. 😟

Might be time to resurrect ‘Nude Day’

I noticed someone has suggested you buy one of those sails that screen the sun out to go on the patio, but not sure that would provide the privacy you want. In cricket they have sidescreens, have a look online at how they're constructed and some of them are temporary. Could you perhaps using scaffolding poles and tent type material make a frame to screen your patio area? That's what I'd look at doing, and make it portable, depends how handy your dh and you are. I'd put a couple of fence posts into the soil mu side so I could pop the screen in as needed and fold it away

Try these on the boundary next to the trampoline

Red Top Fly Traps, Fly Trap, Red, 2 Pack : Amazon.co.uk: Garden & Outdoors

After a week they reek! You will have to sit temporarily elsewhere, but it will hopefully annoy your neighbours enough to move the trampoline.