AIBU not to outright ban kids from playing with balls in garden, after neighbours complained

[MyKidsThrowFood]

I have 2 active boys age 6 & 4. We live in a Victorian terrace with a smallish garden. Both boys love a kick about. Recently our neighbours complained about too many balls ending up in their garden. I completely understand this. However, they said the kids should be forbidden from playing with balls in the garden entirely, which I avoided agreeing to. Instead we instituted a rule where the boys have to request a ball from us so they’re only playing with one ball at a time and it’s supervised.
The boys also apologised. The neighbours didn’t exactly accept the apology but were civil.
This was about a month ago. Since then there’s been one incident of a ball accidentally going over, which the boys apologised for. But now another has gone over. That’s 2 balls in month. Is this an unreasonable amount? Can they now reasonably insist on no playing with balls on the garden ever? My eldest became very tearful at the prospect as he loves football and is very active but the gardens are so small it seems impossible to prevent balls ever going over entirely.

Ignore them, ridiculous to even suggest that in your own garden. They sound mad.

Your neighbours are morons. A ball going over the fence is normal, kids are allowed to play in their own garden. Of course they shouldn’t be forbidden from playing, but you should probably accept you’ll never see those balls again.

The boys must play outside. Neighbours can't complain about 2 balls a month...were they never young?

If you're having to supervise them anyway, would it be easier to take them to the park?

can you make your fence higher to stop balls from going over. I used to get balls from our next door coming over and it didn’t bother me . I just used to send them back over.

Well they can insist absolutely. Id take no notice though.

They really do need to stop the balls going over, it is pretty annoying. I had a rule with my DC of just kicking a ball against our wall or passing to each other, no forceful booting the ball to avoid it going into the neighbours.

It's unreasonable to have balls going over. That'd kill my pets if it hit them.

I think your other rules for your children are good but you need to think more carefully about the impact (ha) of balls going over.

As long as they’re not pestering for balls back or accessing the garden uninvited it’s fine. The neighbour can throw the balls back when they get a chance. That’s how we do it in our street.

You can do what you want in your own garden , can you put some netting up to prevent balls going over . Balls are annoying and not only that they can damage things in peoples gardens when they come over , we had an incident where our free range rabbit was hit many years ago by an incoming football .

I wouldn't care if my garden was just grass and shrubs. But when balls break plants I have carefully cultivated it makes me cross.

Honestly Id say more than 3 times a week would be unreasonable, twice a month is nothing. Are they asking for their ball back immediately though? That might not be so convenient. We just agreed w the neighbours that we'd return them when convenient, although dh did rescue a wand from our gutter recently when an over-vigorous magic battle sent it flying.

Given the age of your sons I don't think you need to phase out balls immediately but they will soon be too big for garden football and need to move to playing in the park or on the street (if its safe).

Can you put up a line of netting on that side, that should stop balls going over, and the sight of it should piss off the complaining neighbours. Win win.

Like this: Link

A friend of mine just installed high poles at the corners of her garden with a net hung between them for this same reason. Stops balls going over but doesn’t block light.

They should carry on playing in the garden, my childhood garden was big and still all the balls went astray! Victorian gardens aren't good for football though so it probably won't last long - I used to live in a terrace and the balls used to end up several houses down and we'd never really know where they were! If they love football they will be able to kick it a long way in a year or two.

Put netting up.

Yes I get the concern about balls hitting things so have used softer balls to minimise risk. but the issue is softer balls often bounce more! No chance of them harming pets even a rabbit as neighbours don’t have any and besides they’re very small boys with not too much power behind the kicks. They only go over if they ricochet off something.

Balls going over doesn't annoy me. Are the neighbours possibly annoyed by the noise of playing. Do they kick the ball against the fence for example

And yes I’d love to spend all day in the park but sadly sometimes have to cook, clean, do admin, let tradesmen in, etc.(which I can do while supervising as kitchen opens on to the garden with sliding doors).

Depends on what type of ball they are using 1 of those light weight rubber balls yanbu
But if its proper leather football then yabu as they can cause injury to humans and animals aswellas property damage (broken windows, greenhouses, plants etc)

We still talk about 'the bloody ball family' going back to our neighbours when I was 16 (31 years ago!) Admittedly it wasn't two balls a month, it was much more but it totally ruined our enjoyment of our garden. We had balls land in the middle of our patio furniture, smashing glasses and landing in food, our cats were hit multiple times and at one point my mum just gave up on having plants in pots because they were continually smashed. Oh and one of our koi carp went to the big fishpond in the sky after a football dispatched him to piscine heaven.

So I have very limited sympathy for balls disturbing other people's peace, property and pets. Netting is cheap, effective and won't spoil enjoyment on either side of the fence.

is the ball doing damage? are the boys (or you) going round immediately to get them back, or waiting until a civilised time and then asking for all at once?

put nets up.

Put some netting up with poles that you can put up and down when needed !

Nobody's suggesting you spend the day in the park though. What I was saying is that, as the boys get older, they will get stronger and kick harder and at that point it would be considerate to keep football for the park and for them to use the garden for other games.

No they can’t insist that your children don’t play it your garden with balls!

Its a garden, for playing with and all children play with balls, tennis, football, catch, rugby etc!

Do not ban your children and balls.

I think netting seems a good compromise.

They absolutely must play in the garden. It's a normal part of childhood.

Just put the netting up and hopefully you won't hear from them again and it can all be forgotten.