Neighbours kids playing outside early…

[FooFightersFan]

It’s the school holidays and I appreciate that by starting this thread I’m going to sound like a right grump, but here goes…

Our garden backs onto two houses, both of which are owned by couples with young kids. All four parents work from home full time.

The kids (youngest 3, all primary school aged) regularly play outside in the gardens. The houses are new build with literally no plants or shrubs. Just lawn surrounded by fence / brick walls. The noise just bounces around as there is nothing to ‘absorb’ it.

I accept that they are noisy when they play because they are young, energetic and kids!

Now that the school summer holidays are well under way, it’s become apparent that getting up and out into the garden at 8am is their routine. And they shout. A lot.
Then at 10am they go inside and there is silence for a while.

I can deal with it, I have 2 kids and I appreciate that’s what kids are like.

and here’s the “but”…

My son works full time and his room overlooks our back garden. He works 12 hour shifts a lot of days, in hospitality. Most shifts mean he is home around 11pm and in bed by midnight. He’s getting increasingly fed up with the neighbour kids’ morning routine.

During term time, the outside playing is just at the weekend. But now it’s a daily occurrence due to the holidays, I really feel for my son, because being woken up 90 mins before he needs to be up for his next shift is pretty miserable.

WIBU to message or pop round to my neighbours and see if they can encourage their kids to be quieter (a big ask) or to not let them out before 9:00.

I’ve become that grumpy neighbour 😩

To add to this, kicking the ball repeatedly off the wall/fence at 8am could easily be used in prisoner of war camps as a torture tactic!

It's the OP's son who has a problem with neighbouring children playing in their gardens. If he finds it disturbs him, he can take reasonable actions to allow him to sleep through it like ear plugs or white noise players. That's just past of working shifts.

Young kids can be bouncing off the walls from 5:30 in my experience; keeping them inside until 8am is reasonable.

NB- It wasn't "screaming" until the OP got her arse handed to her as being unreasonable. Funny, that.

My kids play outside all the time but they're not allowed to scream. Nobody needs to be screaming outside regardless of age.
I don't let them out until around 11 unless the forecast is really hot and even then not on weekends.
I'm not sure if it'll make a difference for you to ask @FooFightersFan but I also don't see the harm in trying.

I'd hate to be woken up at 8, if I'd been working till 11, because I need a lot of time to wind down. It's not as if you come off shift and find yourself asleep 7 minutes later. I think earplugs are the way forward, though my sympathies are v much with your son.

This is really strange, you don’t let your children play in the garden until after 11am?! And later than that on weekends?

Most of the world are up and out of the house at work & school by 8am during the week! 11am is mental.

Afraid to say I worked shifts for a few years, and it's earplugs/white noise machine, and blackout blinds, like others say. It was a major win when I finally managed to get my mother to stop emptying the dishwasher (my bedroom was above the kitchen) in the noisiest way possible, after about 2 years...

It’s always brought up as the answer to anyone objecting to neighbour noise, it’s like they’ve never lived in the country. These days harvest carries on into the small hours with milking still starting at 5 or before.

And moving to the middle of nowhere is not affordable to practical for a lot of people.

8am is reasonable unfortunately and it's only over a few weeks.
People working shifts can't expect the world to accommodate them. I feel for your DS but he's going to have to make adjustments- maybe ear plugs or move rooms for a few weeks??

No, I have asked my parents in the past and they say I did not scream when playing and nor did my sisters.

I have spent plenty of time around children - friends' children, neighbours' children, living close to schools and it is only in the last 10 or so years that children seem to be unable to play unless the scream and screech.

When Little Miss Screech talks it is at top volume which is the same as her mum. Again, a fairly newish thing to talk, especially on the phone, at top volume.

You're being ridiculous. Buy him some earplugs.

My Mum told me that she'd haul us all back in if we got to the stage where our 'play' was possibly disturbing others. Not regular play, which can get noisy, but when one of us would tip into screaming or where the neighbours might think there was a murder happening.

Imagine spending the first 4 hours of your day being asked not to scream. No wonder some kids are the way they are these days.

If he finds it disturbs him, he can take reasonable actions to allow him to sleep through it like ear plugs or white noise players.

And the neighbours can reasonably be asked to keep the noise down until a little later.

Incidentally, I don't know how many of those saying use earplugs have actually used them. Some earplugs are effective, but many aren't, and the more effective ones are expensive. (Spot the person married to a snorer!) So they're not necessarily a perfect solution.

This is the problem. People thinking that children have a Right To Scream. Madness

I love that the OP started off all "gosh I know I'm probably being unreasonable, I'm that neighbour, ha ha" because she thought everyone would say no you're not. But when people say yes, actually, you are, she gets all arsey 😂

8am is fine for kids to be out playing. They'd be out the house for school at that time usually so it's what their body clocks are used to. The world doesn't stop because he's a bit tired unfortunately.

No, in other words, people don't get to dictate the reasonable behaviour of neighbours just because their sleep patterns fall outside the norm. Nightshift workers - which I used to be one - don't get to demand absolute silence or demand that the sun is turned off at 3pm just because they are on shift.

And besides which, the guy is getting like 9 hours of sleep anyway.

Asking for noise to be curbed for a short time isn't exactly expecting the world to stop.

He can ask, they don't have to comply. 8am is fine for kids to be out playing. Most people are up and about by then.

Who's talking about dictating or demanding? It should be perfectly possible to ask these parents if some kind of compromise can be reached.

Also, he isn't necessarily getting 9 hours of sleep. We don't all fall asleep when our head hits the pillow and remain asleep all night, regardless how tired we may be.

Builders start around here from 8am and are pretty loud, ditto bin mean so I don't think you can complain about kids making noise. I've done my share of night shifts and have to sleep in the day - earplugs and black-out blinds. I don't let my kids scream though - screaming if for letting me know something is very wrong.

My husband starts work at 3am for 9 hours. That means he has to go to bed at 8pm and come home and have a sleep for a couple of hours.

I have four kids. They play outside, right under his window (and we have a park outside our house so there's children out there 8am to 10pm.

He also has a pretty stressful job, working 45-50 hour weeks on his feet.

He just has to suck it up, but some ear plugs and not expect the world to stop to accommodate him

I'm agog at this really. Why don't you just shrug if he complains? Why's it your job to fix it? Did you get him the job as well? 🤦🏻‍♀️

I totally get where you're coming from, I am not a morning person either and get up later and work later. I have kids both sides 😁. They will be out from about the same time, it's the football that really grinds my gears. You can't reasonably say anything, I use one of those headbands that link up to your phone with a boring book and a timer , a white noise machine, and a fan with the window closed. ( And pray for rain) 😂

We don't have a garden so they're playing on the street.
When they were just starting out on bikes, I realised the sound of a bike with stabilisers going up and down the street was super annoying and there was 3 of them! So we made a no noisy play before 11 rule, it's just stuck since then.
They play inside, sometimes they'll sit on the wall outside with colouring but nothing noisy before 11.