Clocks go back and as if by magic....

[Sonato]

The selfish people show themselves

Bang. Bang. Bang. Footballs against the fence.

Parent. Your. Children.

Its unacceptable

Just take them to the park ffs

Ok sweetie

Wow, someone is really finding the word whump annoying!

Gosh, just imagine if instead of a word on a screen that they can ignore or close, it was the sound of a ball hitting their house wall or fence that they can't get away from 😱

Just imagine if they'd asked politely that the whumper stopped whumping and it still carried on 😱😱

No "report this post" option then... just whump whump whump. I guess it wuld drive them absolutely up the wall.

whump whump whump

whump whump whump

Whump!

So, kids playing in the garden annoys people, kids where dog walkers are annoys people. Presumably you'll get people moaning about noise in the park too (though round here the dog walkers usually are in the parks which is a whole issue of it's own). If they stay in they are screen addicts who need fresh air, if you take them to soft play you're an overindulgent yummy mummy with more money than sense. There's no winning is there?

Some people on MN take great pleasure in calling other parents 'shit parents' Maybe it makes them feel better about themselves or something.

They should be inside alone on screens all day, ridiculous to let your child get fresh air and exercise, make friends and have fun.

By any chance OP, did you spend much of your childhood alone indoors?

Wow - so many posters who think the complaint is with the noise of children just playing, not understanding that it only an issue with children creating noise that is inconsiderate, intrusive and relentless.

I guess, like my old neighbour, they won't understand the difference until it's them on the other side of the wall feeling the whump whump whump going on, and on, and on...

Clearly …. Yes!

And so much projection 😂

Absolutely,?!?REALLY ask them to stop? , they're too fucking ignorant or stupid to realise kicking a ball up against a terraced house or shared fence is going to impact on your near neighbours, I've asked nicely many times, but it rains on deaf ears, I'll say again, I don't mind kids playing, just not against walls or fences IT'S REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING, WHUMP WHUMP! Indeed.

Me too, sums up the annoying sound perfectly.

Garrrrrg they’re at it again. Whump whump whump. One ball has already come over the fence, but it seems they have another ball. I wonder how many they have. Haven’t rung the doorbell - if they do, I will pretend to be out. If they eventually run out of balls because they’re all in my garden and so do actually come and ring the bell, I guess I’ll have to go round and have words with their parents. Not only do I not want to hear the whump whump whump, I don’t want to be continually interrupted by a ball coming over and someone asking for it back. Also when the weather is warmer and I want to sit out, I don’t want a ball landing on my head. I’m trying not to, because at the end of the day we have to live next to them, but I hate our immediate next door neighbours because of the football, and the selfish entitled parking. Literally everyone else on our little street is lovely, but we get the selfish entitled fuckers.

Ime letting the ball down before handing it back - thus inconveniencing the dps having to find an inflater - will see less balls going your way.

Nowhere near enough whumps to be effective!

Lovely here, children having fun, the campsite up the road has guests for the first time this year, BBQs, children playing, laughs and whumps.

Spring has sprung!

Why can't children play nicely anymore? Why does everything they do have to involve noise?

Children haven't changed; you've just got old.

We used to play nicely as children, my mother would not have tolerated us making unnecessary noise.

Absolute nonsense. Children used to be much better behaved on the whole than they are today.

Agreed!

Thats because they arent taught manners and respect anymore. Now they are carrying weapons and murdering each other

Back In The Day dc had more respect for adults. Now they expect their own way on everything..

Absolute nonsense. You notice the ill-behaved ones. My experience - and I'm in my sixties - is that children today are rather well-behaved, 'on the whole'.

I think a little of it depends on where you grew up. But much more of it depends on the tendency of the old to believe that everything's getting worse. Every generation thinks that kids today are ill-disciplined, feckless, lazy, self-centred, arrogant, entitled. Every single generation of old people bangs on about it. You see it in literature going back to the Greeks. But if it were true that each generation were noticeably and quantifiably less civilised than their grandparents, civilisation would have entirely collapsed hundreds of years ago.

No - the problem is not kids 'on the whole'. It's just that you're getting old.

Who are you to say it's 'absolute nonsense'? Perhaps you just haven't witnessed much of it personally.

I like children and I do think the majority are still well behaved, but this thread isn't about them, it's about the ones whose parents allow them to be feral because 'kids will be kids' and should apparently come first at all times, even when it's at the expense of other people. Children being allowed to have and do every single thing they want regardless of whether it's actually in the child's interests, 'no' not being in the parents' vocabulary, you're seriously saying you don't see this? Or see that there's more of it than there used to be?

Things like kids running round the tables in restaurants tripping up the wait staff, or screaming like they're being murdered in their gardens (I don't mean the occasional scream as a normal part of having fun btw, I mean that awful sustained din some of them seem to enjoy producing) have always gone on to some extent, yes - but at one time they were the exception rather than the rule. Admittedly stuff like having iPads blaring in public places without headphones is a relatively new one, but are you really fine and dandy with it disrupting your meal when you eat out? Parents did used to have a better grip on how to be strict when it was needed (I don't mean hitting them btw) and actually teaching kids how to behave in situations where other people's comfort has to be taken into account as well as their own.

I do think it's true to say every generation thinks kids' behaviour has gone to pot, but the difference nowadays is that with some kids today it really has. And actually I do feel that society, while not collapsing, is in a bad place because of excessively permissive parenting. What's going to happen when children who have grown up with no boundaries have to function as adults?

Given that you've stated your age, I'm going to hazard a guess that you know full well all these behaviours are worse now. You just don't want to admit it.

@dreamiesformolly Who are you to say it's 'absolute nonsense'? Perhaps you just haven't witnessed much of it personally.

Well, obviously I'd say much the same to you. 'Absolute nonsense' was your phrase, not mine. I simply bounced it back.

'Children used to be much better behaved on the whole than they are today' was what you said. But I'm glad to see you've modified that to I do think the majority are still well behaved. So not 'on the whole' then.

So you either think that the well-behaved majority is a smaller majority than it used to be, or you think that the ill-behaved minority, thougn much the same size as it used to be, is even more ill-behaved. I don't see how your evidence for that can be anything other than anecdotal. As is mine of course.

And yet you deny mine...

Given that you've stated your age, I'm going to hazard a guess that you know full well all these behaviours are worse now. You just don't want to admit it.

The last recourse of the weak argument. Declare that the other person agrees with you really - but they're lying.

None of what you have just typed changes my opinion that you’ve either had a very narrow set of experiences around children and their behaviour, or perhaps see the kind of kid behaviours I mentioned as OK. I stand by what I said.

And to answer your ‘either/or’ question, my view is that bad behaviour absolutely is getting worse. 100%.