To ask neighbour to close curtains

[Handrearedmagpie]

First of all, I know IABU. It's more a question of HOW unreasonable.
My young DS is autistic, non speaking and has a severe learning disability. Meltdowns are triggered by sudden changes like adverts on the TV. Neighbour diagonally across street from me has very large windows and an ENORMOUS TV. Never shuts her curtains/blinds so DS can watch her TV from our house and fixates on it when his own tablet is removed before bedtime.
Every. Single. Night. It's meltdown when adverts appear on her TV. Obviously I shut our own blinds but he knows her TV is there and just opens them again, or he will go upstairs and hyper focus on her TV from my bedroom window.
How horrendously unreasonable would I be to ask her to close her blinds for half an hour at night just to avoid this nightly hysteria??! I'm at my wits end with it.
YABU - absolutely unreasonable. It's your child's disability to manage.
YANBU - you can only ask and see what she says.

Don't know if this has already been suggested but if a temporary change will break the cycle, why not buy her a enormous bunch of flowers, explain the issue and she if she will put the flowers in a vase on the window sill to obscure the view of the telly - the neighbour gets to enjoy the flowers for a week or more and you get to see if a temporary change fixes the issue

Could you put up a tall fence or something in your garden so he can't see the house opposite? Just thinking he may still be in the habit of watching the house opposite or choose another house to fixate on, even if they do agree to shut their blinds.

OP, perhaps ask for just one night. Explain the situation and say you are exhausted and would be very grateful for one night of respite, only if it works for your neighbour. Perhaps the neighbour could suggest a night which might be more convenient for them. Explain all the way that you understand if they can’t.

If they cannot even give you one night, then you can see the kind of person they are, and just smile and thank them and leave. And if they can give you one night, then that’s better than nothing. And they might even do it again.

My parents are from a poor, very different culture. I simply cannot imagine people in that community behaving in such a mean-spirited insular way as some on this thread.

A few nights with the curtains shut should not be a huge deal for anyone. And of course nobody has to agree. But it’s really not that big a deal to help an exhausted mum at crisis point, for most decent people anyway.

It's worth asking. I wonder if a few weeks might break the cycle and it might not have to be a permanent thing.

Indeed. Definitely ask.

I don’t think asking your neighbour would hurt. Most people would be happy to do this to try and help.

Some people are really slow of understanding.

The OP is asking whether it would be okay to ask the neighbour. She is not dictating what the neighbour can do. She knows that it is her problem. She knows that the neighbour is entitled to live as she wishes. People are so quickly to get all huffed-up and offended: NoBoDy CaN TelL mE hOw to LiVe My LifE.

This is called a favour. Something you ask of somebody where there is no gain to the other person and possibly a bit of hardship. It is asking somebody to show a bit of kindness if it is achievable for them. It is not a command. It is a request for understanding and thoughtfulness. Perhaps some people have never come across that concept in their lives so they are struggling so hard to understand what the OP is saying?

Will do. Thanks for the tip.

The thing is, I am mostly kind. I try to help people whenever I can especially when it absolutely no skin off my nose.

Nobody is asking this woman to sit in the pitch black anyway. She has two windows in her living room on different sides of the room. It’s only for a hour. Honestly, some people really are obtuse.

No one, not a single person, has said it's the neighbours problem to solve. It's clearly the OP's problem, but as a neighbour if I could do something so bloody simple to help a neighbour out in these circumstances I would want to be asked and unless I had someone with SEN who would be negatively impacted I'd happily do it to HELP.

Aren't they just!!

OP could alter her routine. Her child isn't anyone else's responsibility.

Asking the neighbour to change her behaviour is making it her problem. 🫣

Where does she say her son was the neighbour’s responsibility? I must have missed that.

What have you pointed out that's obvious? We don't turn the TV off everytime we leave the room. It stays on until we lock up and go to bed. Also the TV stays on when DH and I go for an evening walk because there are teenagers in the house coming and going.

Are you always this dramatic? Dies your life change every time you close your curtains?

By asking if her neighbour would change her behaviour to help her son. 🫣

What a laughable response.
When I close or open my curtains is entirely up to me, not my neighbours.

No that’s not the same thing at all. It is asking for a favour. Not handing over responsibility of her child.

You love over-using that emoji on threads don’t you?!

Then you say no to the OPs polite question. It’s not difficult.
She’s not demanding anything, just querying if it’s possible.

Me too.

Nobody said she was handing over responsibility, but she is asking for her son to be a factor in the neighbour's decision making process. While the neighbour might sympathise, it's unfair to expect her to prioritise him.

Or, OP just leaves her neighbours out of her problems.
It's not difficult.

It’s not a ‘tiny’ thing. A favour is asking a friend to do a small task as a one-off, for a legitimate reason. The OP is suggesting asking this neighbour, with whom
she clearly has no relationship, to do something every single evening. So the poor neighbour would then be expected to set an alarm or keep an eye on the time to jump up and close her curtains every night at the dictated time, regardless of whether she’s on the phone, working on her laptop, eating her dinner, or any of the other things people might do in the privacy of their living room, while the TV is on.

It’s a bloody ridiculous ask, and the holier-than-thou people claiming they’d happily do it are all talking out of their backsides.

I would do this. Yes there is an initial expense but you aren't relying on someone else.