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 😩

I have children on the spectrum and they are quite capable of learning to be quiet and adjust behaviours.

I think it depends on the relationship with the neighbour. If you can mention it and accept if they say no, it might be okay to bring up. If you temper it with just asking for 9 in the weekends, you might get somewhere. It all depends on personalities involved and how it's approached.

An unfortunate fact of shift work is that you have to deal with everyone else living within normal waking hours, so the onus is on the shift worker to adjust. I don't think 8am is a problem myself but would be happy to wait till 830-9 to release the children if the neighbour was having problems with it. I know when my kids were young the neighbour was seen looking sleepily out the window at 9.30am one morning. If they'd come and complained I wouldn't have accepted that. 9.30am is reasonable, sleeping until 11 is not.

8am is too early to be screaming in the garden. Get yourself a hot tub and start noisily using it in the evening till late. Then you can negotiate reasonable quite times for both sides, plus you’ll have a hot tub 😁

Yes but as you know no two people on the spectrum behave the same so that’s difficult to say.
ljke you said the onus is with the person working shift work

Sorry? Because I’m putting my opinion across I don’t belong here? Are you ok? You are all very pre occupied with me. Little gang mentality 🙄

That is true (about people on the spectrum) but I think they can learn. Some might just need more work than others. It sounds like it's a set slot of time from 8-10 anyway, so it's not all day. Even if it was, I'm not sure there's much you can do. The shift worker has to adjust (to all sounds, not just kids).

Indeed. I met one of my best friends from uni working in a bar. She dropped out and worked full time there. The rest of us graduated in several fields. She owns 9 establishments now. Three pubs , 4 bar and restaurant complexes, 2 restaurants, in two countries. Spends all winter in the hot one. Summers in UK one. Has managers doing the daily running of all of them, so she doesn't need to work a lot. Dropping out worked out way better for her than all the dire predictions made when she did it 20 years ago!

I thought you were going to say 6am not 8am! I don’t think there’s much to complain about there. Some of the children by us are out around 7am. I’m glad the weather is decent enough for them all to get outside. I have worked weird hospitality shifts way back when I was in my late teens and I know the sleep pattern is a bit squiffy.

I think he needs to think about investing in something to drown out the noise OP. Good luck.

I definitely agree with you about work. Children can obviously be taught and it can take time like you say. It could be down to bad parenting but I was just thinking of other possibilities. It’s definitely not a great situation

I wonder if your son's car disturbs your neighbours as he arrive home after 11pm? That would be annoying.

I doubt these kids are screaming and screeching constantly. What a boring life if all kids have to play quietly. Also squealing as a child isn’t a crime. Let them have fun.

I think children playing outside at 8am is acceptable. If you didn’t want to be interrupted by normal human noise I don’t think you should have bought a house with
a garden backing onto two other gardens. I do feel for him though. Blackout blinds, ear plugs and a white noise machine will help

You're very preoccupied with everyone hun. And then when everyone has commented back you don't like it 😘

God this interaction between you and the other poster is pathetic. Are you both 12?

Op why can’t your adult son speak to the neighbours himself if he’s got a problem with their children? There comes a time when you need to cut the apron strings and let your adult offspring sort their own trivial problems - he’s not a little boy who needs his mummy to help him anymore.

They shouldn't be letting their kids scream at any hour of the day. I had neighbours whose kids did this from even earlier in the morning all day long when school was out because of COVID. They were so loud the noise would hurt my ears. I'm talking literal screaming, on and on. It was bizarre. I don't know how their voices didn't go hoarse from it. I solved that by moving. Kids who are accustomed to being allowed to be noisy aren't going to stop even if you did succeed in getting the parents to try to calm them down.

When I was a kid my parents would have lowered the boom if we were screaming like that.

8am isn't early in the week. Most people have left for work at that time.

I live in a street full of student HMOs which are empty in the summer. This means almost every house is having building work - new roofs, windows, garden work etc. I can tell you every builder has started work by 8. It's a real cacophony but perfectly legal.

I personally wouldn’t have let my kids in the garden at 8am, 9am was always the earliest as I am a considerate neighbour.

that said he’s getting 8hrs sleep, so it’s not terrible but I guess his only option is to wear ear plugs. You could ask them, id have obliged if a neighbour came and asked politely, as I was always wary of my kids being too loud outside and regularly brought them if noise levels got excessive.

Do you know how ‘in my day’ you sound? And how we all know that phenomenon is just poor memory and perception of things in the past?

Huh? This is a forum where people are allowed to give their opinion. I didn’t realise that I wasn’t allowed to post more than one comment. Thanks for letting me know 🙄

I agree, however, apparently I’m not entitled to my opinion.

My neighbours let their 3 kids under 5 play in the garden at 530am when it was really hot a few weeks ago. Every day. They screamed and played music from what sounded like a kids toy. The same song over and over and over. Luckily theyre on holiday now its warm again. I was fuming.

I disagree with most too- you wouldn’t mow a lawn before 9am because of noise 🤷‍♀️

of course I let my own kids out at that time….. but they aren’t screaming and shouting. We also aren’t that overlooked.

We don’t let our DC play outside before 8.30am out of respect for neighbours. They’re not loud but you’d still hear them if you were on either side with windows open (we can hear neighbours chatting in their garden at night).

8am seems a little too early, and I say that as a parent of DC that wake at 6am. 8.30am onwards is when children are walking to school around here during term time so the noise naturally increases then.

Maybe that's because in my day parents did a much better job of parenting than so many do now and, no, I don't have a poor memory and/or perception of things in the past.

Just because you don't accept that so many parents are shit nowadays does not make it true. Just look around anywhere there are parents and children and you will see just how shit many of them are.

I agree there's a lot of parents that don't actually parent much these days. However, not my problem as I am not the one who has to live with or deal with them.