Balls from neighbours in my garden

[tempname1234]

We have newish neighbours that have a few children. They’ve given the children a basketball stand and football goalie net - set up right at the shared fence line.

we now have the joyful sound of the football or basketball hitting the fence from as early as 7:30 (welcoming the shorter days!) in the morning through the day in the weekends, from after school week days.

we work from home. We also have a lovely garden with many lovely plants for all year round colour having planned and cultivated the garden for many, many years.

we have the best constant noise of the balls hitting the fence, the back of the basket ball hoop, balls in the garden breaking our plants, hitting our garden furniture etc.

for all of the summer, we have asked nicely both in person and by text to please ask their children to stop this. Clearly they don’t.

AIBU? would I be unreasonable to not return the multitude of balls that end up in my garden? Looking for solutions to at least stop the destruction of my garden plants (less noise would be ideal too). The noise gives me migraines!

any other suggestions??

Joy squashers 😂
Yes, don't worry OP. Just smile and shake your head wistfully as you look at your obliterated plants. At least they are having fun hey?

Mr Twit, is that you?!?!

How petty are those that think letting a little air out of the balls is the way to deal with this. Besides, it hardly take any time to blow the balls up with an electric pump.
As for puncturing or hiding them, get a grip! Breaking or stealing children's toys is a low move, and will completely destroy your relationship with them while not solving the problem.
Speak to your neighbours. Tell them how you'd like them to manage the situation. Make your expectations clear to both the parents and the kids. But don't be unreasonable.

Ops asked nicely all summer. The next steps are to make it an inconvenience for the adults.

If the adults noted ops issues and tried to mitigate against them she wouldn’t be posting here.

Seeing as the OP has already spoken to their neighbour in person and by text with no change, what is the reasonable next step in your view? Just put up with it?

tell them that any balls that come over will be returned once a week at a time of your choosing.

And give them a bill for all the damage.

You might want to ask them to move the things from the shared fence. If not, start bouncing your own ball against the fence at times that you know they won't appreciate it...

Yep. It's not nasty. It's consequences for inconveniencing others.

when it happens multiple times a day and damages your property it gets old very quickly and patience wears out.

And when that doesn't work? I honestly wish talking to them had worked for me. But no, sadly it didn't. Cost us money to fix the damages caused which the parents denied. And as they got away with it, it's just got worse.

Could you just tell the neighbours that you will return the balls when you have a moment in your working day and ask specifically that they do not call out but wait till you have a moment?

We are moving for this reason. Not that many balls actually come over but the relentless thunk bash of the basketball and the football being smashed against the fence for hours means enjoying our garden in the summer is impossible. Parents couldn't care less and just as inconsiderate as their irritating offspring.

Funny you should say this. I have played and coached football for over 30 years. I have spent hundreds of hours coaching children for free to play football.

My own children played football for hours every evening. I even choose the location of our family home when they were younger based on being able to access grass areas easily.

Guess what.......my children hardly ever played football in our back garden. Because i got off my arse as a parent and made sure i went with them so they could play football and not bother the neighbours.

It always boils down to lazy parents, not grumpy joy squashers

I think these are 2 different things though.

1. The noise of a ball bouncing. Yes it's a pain but also is the noise of a drill or someone digging the street but you wouldn't ask workmen to stop because obviously they aren't doing it for fun.

1. The inconvenience of returning the balls. For this talk to your neighbours like an adult and suggest they put a net up.

It isn't hard is it? Deflating balls and insisting parents go over is just childish behaviour

Get a lakeland terrier.

The kids next door soon stopped their balls landing in my garden when they realised that my lakie could reduce a plastic football to postage stamp sized bits in less time than it took them to walk round and knock on my door.

It’s not being inconvenienced. It’s a ball in the garden. If someone’s reaction to that is to damage the child’s toy, there’s something really wrong with them.

I think YABU. It is not in the least unreasonable for children to use a garden to play in during the daylight hours. Get some headphones if the noise bothers you.

Have you been drinking?

Genuine question... why do you think its antisocial to have the goal and basketball at the side fence but not antisocial to have it at the back fence ?

Yes. Gods forbid parents set up goal posts with a modicum of thought

our garden backs on to a school and we get so many balls over the fence.
Our 'fence' is actually a 6 foot wall topped by 2 feet of wire fencing as I have an escape artist for a dog.

I honestly don't mind throwing them back most of the time, my kids went to the school, nice ot see kids playing etc etc, and I certainly did for our neighbour
BUT
a new club started and I am pretty sure the teacher used our wall as a practice place. Every Monday I got literally dozens of balls over, and they were doing a lot of damage.
I was not impressed. I stopped throwing them back for a few weeks. I think they ran out of balls, but it did stop. Then I returned them all.

Like the OP, when someone starts taking the piss, I object.
There is a difference between normal neighbourly stuff and deliberately having your goal set against a neighbours fence so the ball goes over all the time, and refusing to address it despite being asked.

It must be annoying to have the ball constantly kicked up against the fence or into the garden.

They can be more careful or maybe go over the local park and have a kick around.

Kids can still be kids without inconveniencing everyone around them. Me and my siblings and friends managed it when we were younger.

I willingly throw balls back because it’s not that often but I drew the line at chalk, toy cars and even a fishing net!!! Oh and we have a high 6ft fence, so anything other than balls is deliberate. Tough shit buttercup!

I'm a keen gardener and some of the plants in my garden were very expensive and need a lot of looking after.
Having next door's feral grand children making a game of kicking balls over the fence to thud down on top of my precious pampered plants was traumatising.

I spoke to them about it, explained that the plants were very delicate and would not survive being crushed. This made the "game" even more irresistible.

As soon as the ball was in my garden they'd drag chairs to the fence so they could peer over to see the damage, and then howl for me to come out and return their ball.

I told them that they got one ball return/day, but they didn't believe me. So the next time they started yelling for their ball I told them I'd throw it back tomorrow.

They sent the grandparents round to demand the return of their ball. I gave the grandparents a lecture about antisocial behaviour and the benefit of immediate consequences for teaching children life lessons. They spluttered but didn't have any counter argument and went home without the ball.

Then I heard heartbroken wails from next door's garden, and saw that the two nasty boys had stolen their sisters doll and thrown it over the fence and were joyously crowing about how she'd never get it back again.

So I picked up the doll, walked to the fence, called the little girl over and very carefully handed over her doll. I told the boys that their ball would now not be returned until the day after tomorrow, and if they threw any more of their sister's stuff over the fence they'd be lucky to get it back next week. They accused me of stealing their ball. I said they needed to learn how to look after their own things and stop blaming everyone else for their own inability to control a ball. (Which upset them both because we all knew that they were kicking the ball over the fence on purpose and had no difficulty controlling it).

I threw the ball back two days later, and it (and the sister's toys) never flew over my 6 foot fence again.

Honestly after they snapped the stem of the fern leaved peony that I'd grown from seed and nurtured for two years, and that was just starting to flower it's a wonder I didn't take a carving knife to their damned ball. I would have happily stabbed it to shreds and choked them with the bits.

If it happened rarely and the children were apologetic—if it wasn't a frequent, damaging annoyance and the parents did what they could to mitigate the effect it had on their neighbours—then I would be all sweetness and light and accept the inevitable (reasonable level of) noise as part of life. But if they're doing it all the time, damaging property, demanding my time, not making any effort to be considerate, then no, I wouldn't feel guilty for damaging the balls, if the other methods (letting the air out, making the parents fetch the balls, being available only rarely) failed to work. If that makes me an ogre, then so be it. 😈

This is so true. It is lazy parenting. You can tell which are the lazy ones on here! Probably watching TV and stuffing down cake whilst the kids irritate and inconvenience the neighbours. Letting a ball down isn't cruel, it will just inconvenience the lazy parents slightly.

im very glad to know by your reply that you don’t suffer migraines. They can be very debilitating. Yes, the constant bang, bang, bang that is randomly repeated throughout the day of balls hitting the fence does bring on migraines for me.

I then have to dose up and then cannot function very well at my job - I’m work from home so I can’t get away from the noise.

Working from home in a coffee shop or other public venue isn’t appropriate for my line of business for GDPR reasons. I’d been working from home very well for years without any issue until these new neighbours moved in.