To wish neighbour would stop letting their child on my drive?

[SillyBear1]

Hi - very lighthearted in the grand scheme of things but annoying to me nonetheless!

We live in a detached house. We have a large front area of grass outside our living room window which is ours and we’ve worked on with edging, decorative stones, small shrubs around the outside etc. It extends down to the street footpath and beyond that is the road.
Next to that on one side is our drive. On the other side is a path that leads to a neighbour’s garden gate and on the other side of that, their bits of a ‘block’ of parking spaces for a very small terrace.

Neighbour has a child about 2 who frequently runs all over our front garden and around our drive. This is usually when she’s putting him into the car as, instead of carrying him from the house to the car (as I do with my similar aged child) she seems to stay finishing up in the house, whilst the front door is open and he runs off.
He usually runs from their door, across our front garden and onto our drive. It usually results in, Benny Hill esque, her running around our drive/cars trying to retrieve him as he runs off more.

We’ve had solar lights broken as one occasion he ran onto our garden and started pulling them out and the decorative stones get scattered most times.
Today, I get a notification that someone is at our door, checked it to see his gran and him are stood right up on our drive, practically at our front door.
He’s wanting to see the Halloween decorations we’ve started putting up (early I know, do it for fun for my own children!) Instead of removing him, to look from the path, as I absolutely don’t mind people doing and everyone is usually very respectful every year, she then lifts him up, nearly bumping him off my car in the process and standing nigh on top of my car, pointing things out to him which went on for ages before they left.

This is happening so many times now - I absolutely appreciate toddlers are fast and opportunistic (!) but I don’t think there’s too young an age to teach not wandering onto people’s property or take measures to stop it happening after the first few times!

If she happens to pull up on an evening and we’re also there getting ours out, she carries him out and into the house then.

Aside from the annoyance to me, I’m also worried he’s going to get hurt from the road or as our drive has a step on it he could easily fall on; the other day, our Ring captured him getting right across our drive, nearly onto next door’s the other way, whilst you can hear her asking where he’s gone. We both have big cars you can’t see past from her house.

Can you/would you say something to her - I don’t want to be a ‘nasty’ neighbour as I know how toddlers are but equally, it’s not somewhere I want children running about on or to feel responsible if he hurts himself?

Fence need not be expensive. DIY with posts, staples and chicken wire. Almost invisible but effective. Plant some climbing roses, honeysuckle or the like.

Most importantly, will protect your own children too (and dogs).

I think a small fence is a good option.
We are very strict with our kids about going onto neighbours properties, but they don't really understand at that age. If there are things to want to see they'll go for it unless we are physically there to prevent them.

And we do the same as your neighbour when leaving the house, our toddler would go out on the drive/front garden whilst we finish to get ready (with the door open). The hallway is too small for all of us and he tends to run around / cry to get out. i'm glad we have fences both sides so he can't run off to their drives.

Can you not put a fence up between you both?

I was with you until I got to the bit about solar lights. Perhaps you could send this toddler round to my neighbourhood to pull up all the solar lights in my neighbours’ gardens, they do my head in every bloody night!

I agree with others - you’ve never said anything so she thinks you don’t mind - and why you would not knock their door to tell them about the dog poo is really beyond me!.
come on OP are you this passive with everything in life?
it wouldn’t bother me about the child in my garden bit the dog poo is crossing the line!

I would get het up about him breaking stuff though, especially if they haven’t offered to pay for it.

Unfortunately as you haven't put a stop to their behaviour before now, they clearly see your garden and driveway as an extension of their own. They don't control their kids when they are getting them into/out of their cars so they let them run wild on your driveway and grass and garden.

The only way to deal with people like that is to install a fence, preferably one that a dog can't either climb over or through.

I think I’d have to say something pretty direct - ‘Sorry, but my front garden is not a public space - I’d be grateful if you could keep your child off it.’

I don’t know about anyone else, but I always made a point with both dds and Gdcs, of telling them that we do NOT go in other people’s front gardens. Very small children have no conception of private space, and need to have it dinged into them.

If they’re the types to be highly offended/outraged, I might have to install a boundary, a low fence or hedging. Preferably something prickly!

OP ..I think you mentioned earlier in one of your posts, suggesting your DH may not be as diplomatic as you are? If this is the case then let him loose and you say nothing! If your DH does not mind being the "bad" guy then I would go that route! I have a DH who is bloody marvellous at having no patience for the social niceties when sorting things out that are affecting us as a family! He can be very blunt and direct and this works very well for us if you get my drift! We once had similar with next door and it was a joy to behold when he explained in his way why their behaviour was unacceptable! I hope i am not painting him in a bad light because he is the most reasonable man ever who minds his own business and never bothers anyone but when he calls something out he does it very plainly with no hesitation and leaves no error in his explanation! He would in your case say something like.."oi Pal keep your boy of my garden will you? Sick of it, he broke one of my lights the other week and its pissing me off and I am not having it, cheers..Aren;t these ring cameras bloody marvellous?" He would be firm,friendly,breezy even but very pointed. He would also say bugger getting new fencing,not spending more money to keep that little bugger out! But then if he had to he would order the biggest fencing and tell next door exactly why and totally embarrass them and go round with half the bill, not expecting them to pay in the slightest but for his own amusement! Maybe another way or you to go?!

Get a sensor that sets off a dog barking sound. That’ll make sure that she retrieves her child quickly!!!

Put up a polite sign saying ‘lawn in process of being treated pls stick to designated path’.

Even a toddler should be taught where they can and can't go. Our front gardens are all open but my kids never went on other people's because we taught them not to.
If she carries him in when you're out there, try going out as she's coming home......

Spikey low hedge

Get a fence, or that kid will be arsing about on your property until he leaves for university.
You also might not want your own DC following his lead.

How about the cat motion sensors that squirt water?

I'd say id treated the lawn with some super unhealthy fertiliser and have put some round up on the drive to kill any weeds. You've noticed her toddler sometimes runs across but you don't want him coming into contact with dangerous chemicals.

We had an issue with a neighbour reversing onto our driveway to turn around, which annoyed me. I caught them on video while my cat was happily sat on the drive, minding her own business, when suddenly a car came towards her.

I sent them a message just saying "I've noticed that you reverse onto our driveway sometimes. This morning one of our cats was sat on the driveway and had to run away. Could you please not turn around on our driveway, for the safety of our cats and any other visitors we might have." She was really apologetic and it's not happened since.

So, you could do a similar "I've noticed little Billy runs onto our garden and driveway sometimes. I'm really worried that one day someone will turn onto our driveway and not be expecting him to be there and am terrified something could happen to him. If possible, could you please make sure he doesn't run over onto our property? I am thinking of putting up a small fence to make it safer otherwise."

They shouldn’t be on OP’s path either!

Frankly letting a 2 year old out the front of the house when it isn’t enclosed is terrible! Residential roads are often quiet (assuming not on a main road) but not completely free of cars! I don’t let my 7 year old out the front alone.

We have neighbours who have let their older children (5-8 ish) run around our drive but we are a terrace so it’s harder. When we were away last year they were running around our drive at nearly midnight! A comment was made on the village page to say could the people letting their kids run around on {our road, at around our house number} please stop as they are trying to sleep and have to get up early for work. I was mortified people would think it was my kids, who were a) 150 miles away on holiday b) fast asleep and had been for a few hours at that point! Like you, I could see it was them on my drive via the ring doorbell. Their kids have woken my youngest (a toddler) up before running around at gone 10pm. After that post on the village page though it stopped happening.

Make a jokey comment, ‘oh he sets off my ring door bell notifications most days’ see how she reacts. She clearly doesn’t know you know.

The people here who don't see an issue with it, are obviously similar to your neighbour. Letting a toddler out of your sight when you're offloading shopping is irresponsible and dangerous.

Sounds like the dad isn't any better either.

I'd say something to them and mention the broken solar light.
Say that you're worried that in addition to accidentally breaking something, he'll also hurt himself.

I have neighbours girls do this, have younger children myself but anytime they wandered into next doors garden they got a telling off as its not the thing to do. Had the neighbours kids run across my driveway with the wife backing on it once and when i had a circular saw as i was cutting doors. Not safe not ideal

Anyone who thinks this is acceptable is the kind of person th

Anyone who thinks this is acceptable is the kind of person that is the problem with today’s world.
I’d be mortified the first time my toddler (yes I have similar aged children) did this, and it certainly wouldn’t happen again!
sounds like she also needs reporting to social services if she’s leaving her front door open and leaving a toddler open to running onto a road and getting run over by a car! We have our front door locked and chain across when in the house so our kids can’t get out and do this!
so many rude rude people

Difficult one as you don't want to fall out with the neighbour. I think a fence is the answer.

Or - you could white lie and say to your neighbour that you have had to put slug pellets/weed killer etc on your garden and could the toddler be kept out as it is poisonous to kids.

It is ridiculous that parents don't teach kids to be respectful from the earliest age. Where i live, front lawns have no fencing so the lawn joins the public pavement. My house is not on the school route so i am not affected but, on my walk back from the primary school, the vast majority of kids that are with parents walk all over the private lawns instead of staying on the pavement. Parents oblivious.