To keep hold of footballs until they're collected

[Tricho]

Ndn has children that enjoy a kicksbout against our shared fence - I've raised this many times as the noise travels right through my house and tbh renders sitting out there impossible- tbh I find this utterly selfish because we'd all like to enjoy our gardens on nice days!

Have not got much back by way of support and now we're in the summer hols it's gone crazy.

I have had 8 balls (big heavy cased type) kicked over in the past week inckuding 5 in one day- with the latest arriving just now after hours of incessant kicking.

My garden is miniscule due to an extension (about a third of the size of hers) and there are things in it that absolutely will ger broken one day by these balls (garden furniture, bbq, lights etc) not to mention myself if I'm out there

I've previously thrown them back but I've absolutely had it now and have been storing them in my shed awaiting collection

Thought process being
A) if they have to repeatedly come and collect they'll get sick of it and kick the ball elsewhere (god forbid maybe even the other way towards their own house)
B) will give me a chance to converse again about how disruptive it is and the risk to my property
C) it gives me a bit of peace!

As yet no ones come to collect - I have every intention of giving back on collection but tbh I'm done with their selfishness and disregard for my peace and property

Oh that's OK then

Also, yes my dog does bark, she likes to make her presence known, but the second she starts outside she's indoors because I'm a considerate human.

However I have found that letting her loose at the fence when she hears the noise to "protect the house" with her voice does help wrap things up!

Letting little ones and toddlers kick a ball round in their garden is fine as far as I'm concerned and if it comes over I'll happily throw it back. However older kids playing football is something else and they should be down the park. As I told my own boys.
We too were subjected to countless balls coming over last summer, squashing plants and the banging of the ball against our fence. It is really loud and when they whack the ball into the fence it makes you jump. I asked him to move his goal away from our fence. This happened briefly but then back to the fence. Sooo I got fed up. In the evening I threw the balls back into their garden so they hit the back of their house to make the parents aware balls were being thrown back, if they hit a wheely bin all the better. Others went over the back of the fence to a wooded bit. It sorted it, the balls stopped and I haven't heard much football playing this summer. It shouldn't have to get to this point as the parents should have stepped in before. Alas some couldn't give two hoots as long as the kids aren't under their feet.

No idea but if a ball is kicked hard enough over a 6ft fence onto a chihuahua it could cause damage.
Regardless, why can't kids play football at the park, on the greens, at your house. Why does it have to be against your neighbours fence and how do so many balls accidentally get kicked 6ft in the air, that's ridiculous.

Paint them as human faces contorted in agony and put wigs on them and impale them on sticks facing their way.

She sounds useless!

Have you tried shouting something like “Who kicked that ball, you’ve just broken my plant pot/hit the dog/hit me, stop kicking the ball into my garden”

😆 😆 😆

Hahahahaa I love this!

I used to have problems like this but they would also ring my doorbell asking for the balls. I started saying that I would throw them back next time I went out in the garden, which could sometimes mean I had them for a week or two.
it eventually stopped but it could have been because the culprits grew up!

OP I feel your pain.

I have become the grinch of football with our neighbours. Not because I am bothered about them playing football or the noise or an odd ball coming over the fence but because they are breaking my property and the amount a ball was coming over was becoming ridiculous (18 times in 20 mins according to my garden camera) they would just come and get it without asking and leave my gate open so my dog could get out.

They battered the ball off the joint fence so much it broke the slats and weakened it so bad it came down with the winds.

Their parents did replace it with me but then never stopped them from kicking it off the fence again. Utter disrespect for our property.

i ended up telling them they couldn’t get the balls back themselves and I would throw them over. Soon put a stop when they had no balls to kick because they were all in my garden and I was at work!

Exactly what I was going to write!

A ball coming over a fence will easily break greenhouse glass as it is not toughened (ask me how I know).

Near us they alternate between kicking the ball against the fence and kicking it up onto the roof.
The "game" seems to be to let it roll down the tiles, bounce off the gutter and then to belt it when it lands on the floor (hence it clearing an 8ft hedge easily & regularly).
Needless to say that said gutter leaks like a sieve due to a football bouncing off it, great big water stain down the brickwork when it rains.

One can always tell the parents who let their sprogs run riot and don't care about others, especially now that the free child minding is closed for a few weeks and they're stuck with them!

Yes she's tried to talking to the parents. The problem is that the mother is the kind of limp lettuce mum who is so bad at being a parent she repeatedly lets her child thump a fence with a ball.

It's antisocial behaviour to make loud repeated noise, like banging continually against a fence or leaving trampolines in oiled and letting them bounce for hours. Only chavs allow it.

Which is completely different from laughing, singing, talking , playing kind of noise.

I can't throw them back until the kids knock round here - our house borders onto about 4 gardens (some of them are quite triangular and come to a point bordering our garden) - cos I don't know which house they belong to until the kids come and ask!

I only ever minded with one group who were part of a family of utter knobs and who would just climb up fences and yell until you returned the ball (we had a dog so they didn't dare come down from the fence) - not only were they foul, but their aim was absolutely shit.

My neighbours are small children who have kicked a ball with enough force to ruin a number of plants. Both of my peonies most annoyingly. It does not need to break a greenhouse to be destructive.

I've had this issue with my NDN.

The noise is grating, and he's constantly kicking his ball into any neighbouring gardens. I'm sick of seeing it bounce off my fence. The thing that annoys me the most is that he climbs over into my garden (without permission) to get the ball and when the parents are asked to not allow him to do this-they just put on a whiny voice and say, "He's just a child!"

Like, yeah, I know that, that's why I'm asking you, the adult, and not him, the child, to put a stop to it. If he wants the ball back, someone can knock on my door and ask for it.

I also find that people who don't teach their kids to be considerate of their neighbours are often unlikely to take responsibility for any damage their kid's cause.

The most puzzling thing-is that there's a field right opposite their home that he could kick about in and the parents could still see it from their front window. Yet, they insist that he has to play in his small back garden and constantly be zooming balls into other people's gardens. Odd.

Had a similar problem years ago, not in their garden though, on a grassed area by the road. It did have trees and a no ball games sign on but the trees were damaged in bad weather and I presume the sign went the same way. These children (all boys) lived in houses on the estate which all had gardens and there is a grassed area 5 minutes walk away on a disused quarry area where people walk their dogs where you can play ball games - not near houses. Yet they played on this area constantly. These were mostly boys in their mid teens, so they could really welly the ball and as I live in the corner house it was constantly in my garden.

At first I was understanding, I had slightly older boys myself but they had never played on that area and weren't much interested in football anyway, but I remember thinking ah well they aren't doing any harm, just playing sports - that's a good thing isn't it. Then I'm afraid all my good will was eroded by the constant, rude interruptions. Knocking on my door literally (and I mean literally) every 5 minutes and just demanding the ball. If I just didn't answer because I was working they would climb over my fence (NOT a shared fence of course) and then I was faced with strange teen boys nosying in the windows and I noticed the fence was getting damaged. So I used to go out and tell them they were trespassing, but of course they would then complain that i hadn't come to the door - as if I had to be at their beck and call.

I asked why they didn't play on another stretch of grass which was next to their own houses. They said their parents didn't like them playing there. I just bet they didn't! So I thought I would inconvenience their parents a bit and I told them I would only hand their ball back to parents. Well, that backfired as they just brought a different parent every time who didn't see the problem with me giving the ball back once or twice a day - yeah right, once times twenty perhaps.

One time they decided to play rugby and I was on my drive getting something out of the car when the ball just whacked my arm - if it had been my frail, elderly Dad on the drive I'm sure it would have knocked him over. I did go round to the boy's house in that instance to ask them to ask him not to do this near cars and people and, well, the dad was very ungracious. I also asked why they didn't play outside his house and he said there wasn't room - there was of course.

I was tearing my hair out but then a new neighbour moved in. He was an ex policeman and he knew exactly which buttons to press. He wrote letters and got us to go to meetings, and eventually the no ball games sign was reinstated and the community police (who had been singularly unhelpful and uninterested when I phoned them for advice) took to patrolling by and telling them to play on the recreation ground five minutes away. So eventually they either did that or grew out of ball games on the street thank god.

Wow sorry this is so long - but it was such a horrible time for me especially being recently divorced too, and it seemed to go on for ever, but I suppose it was 2-3 years tops.

Ah I have a football mad 7 year old who (almost) obsessively plays football come rain or shine.

But I've bought him a football waist trainer and a big net for the garden. Yes it looks ugly but it stops the ball hitting the fence or damaging the bushes. He has lost 1 ball over a fence and I made him apologise to the neighbour when we went to collect it. If it happened twice in one day I would ban football from the garden for at least the rest of that day. If it became a regular thing then it would be banned all together from the garden.

Maybe you need to show the Mum how annoying / inconvenient it is ... start randomly lobbing items over their fence (Womans Weekly, a slipper, some clothes pegs etc). then keep going round and ringing the doorbell and asking her to fetch them for you from her garden :)

We used to be the neighbours who lost balls over the fence all the time. My son loved playing football in the garden, he never meant for any balls to go over the fence but it still happened all the time. However, he understood he had to knock on the door and politely ask for it back. Also, he wasn't allowed to kick the ball at any fences and especially not anybody else's fence. We had a goal and he had to kick down the garden and there was nobody living on the other side. But as I said, the balls went astray constantly and were forever ending up in the wrong place.

I loved my son playing football in the garden instead of sitting on a computer game. But I completely understand that it is annoying and that fences cannot be broken.

Yes 'kids are kids and we were all one once..', but our job as parents is to teach them that this is NOT CONSIDERATE BEHAVIOUR!! If your kids are at home, and you're with them, then take them to the park to kick the ball, don't expect your neighbours to put up with the annoyance and damage it can cause, why should they, because you're a lazy fucker who can't be bothered to parent your kids?

Alternatively, don't buy them balls, or confiscate them until you can take the kids to the park. If they're bigger kids, and you're not at home, and can't trust them to take the ball to the park, then put the balls in the boot of your car, and take them with you. Do you need any more advice on how to stop your kids acting like animals?

@harmfulsweeties

-they just put on a whiny voice and say, "He's just a child!" Like, yeah, I know that, that's why I'm asking you, the adult, and not him, the child, to put a stop to it.

I love this response and it's one I shall be using from now on in multiple "weak-parenting" situations.

She's spoken to the parents to no avail.

The kids could kick the balls against their own house but choose not to.

It's not just a ball now and then, it's a regular occurrence and the parents are doing nothing about the situation despite OP making them aware

But yes, let's just have kids damaging property and having no natural consequences.

There is nothing stopping the kids asking for their ball back but they haven't.

Speak to the parents again and tell them that you have had enough of the balls being kicked into your garden. Moving forwards you will not return balls and she will have to knock and collect. And any damage to your garden will have to be paid for. As it’s a communal fence you own part of it so they need to stop kicking balls at it or she will have to replace the damage. Yes you know they are kids but most gardens are far too small for that sort of ball play and she needs to take them to a park.

Unless you have experienced this you really can’t understand how awful it is…