About letting dc practice basketball on the drive 5x a week?

[GCSquirrel]

The neighbour across the road has complained. This neighbour doesn’t actually live here full time, her and her dh come down 10 days a month as it’s their second home. She says that dc practicing is ruining her time here and that last time she was down she considered booking into a hotel 🙄.

Ds is 10 and is mad keen on basketball. He has one training session after school per week and a training session on either a Saturday or a Sunday. He doesn’t practice on the driveway on those days so he’s only out there 5 days a week. It always immediately after school on weekdays and never before 10am or after about 5pm at the weekend. I never let him stay out there for more than an hour. The driveway is across our front garden which has a 6 foot wall around it and a solid gate so the ball never bounces out. It’s just the noise of him bouncing that drives her mad.

I spoke to her and told her that I’m not going to stop dc from practicing. If she’d been slightly more reasonable about it I offer have asked her if there were times that it particularly bothered her and got dc to work around that. Instead she came marching across the road, banging on the door and telling me how much she’d paid for her house and how my family was ruining the one place that she came to relax. I’m on really good terms with all my other neighbours and they all know dc well enough to feel comfortable to go out and tell him to pack it in if it’s annoying them for whatever reason.

AIBU not to reduce dc practicing when neighbours are down?

It's an annoying sound but if it's genuinely an hour a day I wouldn't complain. I don't think that's unreasonable.

The back garden is on a slope with no real walls. It would be constantly rolling down into the village.

Oh god. Basketball bouncing is one of the worst noises there is.
he has got to go practise in a park or parking lot with one of those portable hoops

It’s one o& those excruciating noises that drives you demented after 10 minutes or so. Yabu.

Thanks for that, those mats might help

I sympathise. I have 2 children, both play national league basketball and we had exactly this problem with the neighbours.
In the end the only thing we could do was to stop the training in the garden. Luckily they train at the courts now 5-6 nights a week, so no longer a problem. They wouldn't have got to that level without practice though. We spent many nights at the park....
We tried compromising with times, we laid rubber to hopefully reduce the noise (didn't work) and then only practiced when they were out. There is no way round it. It's a nightmare noise 🙈

My DS likes his basketball too. I wouldn’t let him do it for an hour x 5 days a week as it’s a very annoying sound.
30mins 3 times a week, no later than 7pm.

It’s great he’s doing sport, but it’s a thoroughly irritating sound. He needs to find a court.

That said, nothing irritates me more than screaming kids on a trampoline at any time of the day. It is possible for kids to have fun without actually screaming.

An hour of a repetitive noise would be torture. Agree with PP - limit to 10 minutes at a time.

Agree with this. It's an irritating noise but an hour a day within the times that OP has listed is pretty reasonable. No one is entitled to silence!

One hour after school is fine imo but i think I’d either reduce how many days he does it or reduce it to 30/40 minutes instead.

This is my husband. Mad keen about basketball but won’t play outside our house because of our neighbours. So he goes to the park and plays. Perfect all round.

have a fence put up?

This. Can he start a community league or something?

I wouldn't be impressed having to listen to this 5 days out of 7.

People should be able to have quiet enjoyment of their homes.

Awful sound - your other neighbours are out so not complaining.
msybe reduce it on the days they are at the house?

I have sympathy for your neighbours, it's a really annoying noise. Try and compromise.

I would let him carry on, you are limiting it to reasonable times. You can’t live near other people and not expect to hear them . Your neighbour should have bought her second home in the middle of nowhere if other people existing was going to ruin her relaxation.

It’s an awful noise.

And I suspect she was so rude because she reached the end of her tether in trying to put up with it.

You could be the bigger person, take round some flowers or a box of biscuits and sit down over a cuppa to see what compromise could be reached?

Some children a couple of doors down play basketball in their back garden a lot. Hours and hours of it in the summer. I had no idea how annoying the thud of the ball would be until I was out there last summer. I didn't complain and after a week or so I got used to it and it wasn't so noticeable. I don't think an hour in the early afternoon is unreasonable.

Tell her your DS will be practicing between these days and times and she's welcome to find something else to do at that time if it's annoying her.

I absolutely cannot stand adults who control children's play time through sheer selfishness - it's all a bit 'no ball games'. Her need for quiet doesn't trump his need for practice.

Keep him practicing! Would she rather he be glued to a screen? So good to see/hear kids playing sport daily. We used to live in the US and during lockdown I reckon my kids shot a million hoops! As did the rest of the kids on the street! Ignore her

I can’t think of anything more annoying
you clearly don’t care

YABU. Imposing five hours a week of an extremely annoying noise on your neighbours is unreasonable. It's not illegal. It is unreasonable.

"they all know my son well enough to tell him to go in if he’s being a nuisance"

He is being a nuisance, they just aren't willing to ruin the neighbour relationship by asking for him to stop being a nuisance because you will take umbrage at it. The neighbour relationship doesn't matter as much to the woman over the road because this is her second home, so she has come over and said what everyone else is thinking.

It’s a really annoying noise! I would cut it down to 30 minutes a day or 1 hour 3 times a week. I would also lobby for a hoop to be put up in a local park.

OP : AIBU?
A significant number of PPs : yes
OP : well I don't agree.
Why ask if you didn't want to hear or consider the YABUs?