to think my neighbour should give them back?

[Tiredmumno1]

Right i just needed some advice and whether anyone has been in this situation. Months before the end of last year my kids had kicked a few balls (by accident) into our neighbours jungle/rubbish tip garden, but havent thrown them back, even though i asked, i am so sick of it. There is no point in knocking again they never answer the bloody door. Surely this is theft. wwyd.

I don't think you are being at all unreasonable.

Gardens are for playing ball in. How much effort does it take to chuck balls back over the wall? None.

Everyone who thinks it's some major infringement of the neighbour's privacy is an arse.

Kids have always lost balls over fences and walls during good wholesome play. It's no effort at all to chuck them back.

Sheesh!

look lets start again this is getting ridiculous, no i dont swear at anyone usually, so i apologise, lets get back to the matter at hand. my ds's are also raised to be polite and always have consideration in and out of the house, and at the end of the day if we expect our children to be polite then i expect it off other people otherwise surely thats confusing for a child, as they are being polite but dont see others around them doing the same, also i DID ask for the balls at the time, actually i asked on a couple of occasions. my kids do not stay out til stupid times like some others, and certainly do not play with or throw glass, and if i think they are being noisy i will ask them to tone it down or bring them in, so really i am not that bad. and why oh why would they want to keep my bin????? which i did ask to also be returned, they kept filling it so had to ask councils advice in the end, they told me to tip it on the floor and if it wasnt picked up, they would be done for flytipping,what do you think i did????????

OP it is hard to see if YABU or not without knowing how many balls, and whether your neighbours have ever returned any of them. Plus it seems a bit odd to get so worked up after such a long time.

I agree that kids will be kids etc etc. But when my DD was a newborn, the kids from next-door were constantly kicking balls into our backgarden (they also damaged our joint fence by repeated kicking, and have booted a ball accidently at our car on numerous occasions). I'd be in the middle of feeding DD, or changing her nappy, there'd be a knock at the door 'please can I have my ball back'. The choice then was either to unlock backdoor, traipse up to top of backgarden (steep) with DD, to retrieve said ball, or allow the kids to march their muddy footprints through the house to go and retrieve it themselves. This would happen a good few times a day and was VERY annoying. Not everyone is just sat permanently in their garden ready to kick the balls back.

And BTW a few times the kids climbed over the (high) fence and got them back without asking, which made me furious. I am not particularly house/garden proud, but would rather not have my fence panels damaged and my flower beds crushed by cheeky kids. And I was also petrified that they would break their necks tbh.

BTW I did keep one ball for a good while to teach them a lesson! The police never came round to arrest me .

they have only ever given one ball back in over a year and a half and i think it may just be 2 balls over there, i dont think thats alot for a year and a half

It is a pain to keep having to throw balls over Spidermama.

Our neighbour's dc's balls have broken our fence posts,hit our windows several times and damaged our plants.

I've no objection to them playing in their garden but I do expect them to be considerate and to keep the ball low because having to throw it over five times a day or so isn't acceptable, and neither is having our herbs and flowers damaged.

Tiredmumno1 I sympathise with you.
I have a sn child who likes to play in the garden and has thrown some things in neighbours gardens, including dp's house keys. he too is limited to playing outside. His favourite toy was his trampoline but our neighbour got the council to try and make us take it down as he was invading her privacy.
I am also the neighbour who gets the bals in her garden from 2 sides. If I am out there I throw them back over, if not I do when I notice them. we have had an overgrown garden on occasion so sometimes it was a few months before we noticed them but we knew rugby balls go to the side and tennis balls to the back. The dog does sometimes play with them so we keep them ones.
If it is a ball you want back then as soon as it is gone then try and pop over the fence for it. Othere thatn that use cheap balls.

thanks debs, i really am not horrid, bit hot headed at the but not horrid. i better take the shears with me then to wade through the jungle

at the moment sorry

and just to answer my own question if you would like to know, i didnt chuck there rubbish all over floor as suggested by the council. i opened up their rancid stinking bin, and struggled like hell to tip a three quarter full bin into theirs so they didnt get into trouble - not the actions of a bad neighbour imo

Wow, I am having same trouble with neighbours accross the road! They have been dreadful for the last 11 years! But the last 2 years they have started to keep all the balls that go over, not just my boys but other neighbours too. They have 3 children also, but they are never allowed out to play, poor things sit in their bedroom window most of the time watching the other children playing out. I have thought about sending an invoice for the balls that they have kept or kicked into the field at the back of theirs, but I really don't know where I stand on this????

I imagine they'd counter charge you with littering!

well I would say if they wont give them back you will have to leave it. We have a neighbour whos son is constantly kicking balls into our garden and I am sick of digging through the bushes to find it (can be up to three times a day on a nice day)- I do because I dont want to be nasty but tbh I wish his parents would just take him to the park to play football once in a while or at least tell him not to kick it so high.

My husband is quite strict with the boys and limits the time that they are allowed to play with the football. The recent ball my boys kicked over was yesterday, they went over to ask for the ball back, but their replies are either, f* off or they just put music on full blast and ignore the door, but not answering the door is for anyone who visits! This is the first time the any ball has gone over since last summer. Tiredmum, I completey sympathise with you, and understand fully your frustration, I feel the same. I hope it gets sorted for you soon.

Sorry but small enclosed gardens are not suitable for ball games. We and neighbour over the back)were driven to distraction with the boy next door constantly kicking the ball against the adjoining fences (and the balls coming into our garden). Thankfully he seems to have stopped but for three years we could not use our garden. It was incessant from the minute he got in from school until bed time. I dont think some people realise how bad it is having to live with the constant thud thud thud. Dont get me wrong I have nothing against the noise of children playing in gardens; its just bloody ball games - and you cant complain in case you ever want to sell your house.

If it had been my great aunty's garden there would have been a knife through it five minutes after it had gone over. . But she would have brought it back to you, punctured.

What a load of misery guts. When I was a child we would all go to play at my friend's and a few balls would go over during the summer holidays, footballs, shuttlecocks, tennis balls. They neighbours would cheerfully throw the balls the straight back. I don't know if the adult neighbours were friendly, maybe they got an especially nice present at Christmas for the hassle or something.
If I'm at the park I always throw a ball back to teenagers.
If it was my garden, i'd want to have a good relationship with the neigbours and their children. Maybe footballs during dinner would be annoying but then if you normally let the children come through and pick up their ball, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say, sorry no, we're having dinner can you not play ball games until we're finished, we've got glasses out in the garden.

shaz10 does your aunt live to the side of us?

of course its not theft, if you put something in someones garden and they don't give it back...you put it there!
if you want to get petty about it they could acuse you of littering. And trespass if you go get it back.

Sounds like a lovely neighbourhood altogether.

I make DH and LO play ball in the park. LO has plenty of other things to do in the garden that don't involve me fretting about balls going over the fences or breaking neighbours' outdoor posessions.

Actually runny bottom a friend told me the other day the same thing happened to them, they contacted the police, the police say the neighbour has up to 24 hours to give it back, otherwise it is theft.

So runnybottom if you walked past me on a pavement and dropped a twenty and i picked it up, are you saying you would shrug your shoulders and say finders keepers, i mean would that be classed as theft as you dropped it in front of me, and i picked it up.

You accidental or not it should be classed as theft, as its not their property.

If you threw a twenty into my garden and I picked it up, it would not be theft, same as with the footballs. You put your property in someone elses garden. It is not theft if they do nothing.

I don't care what you mate says, I imagine the police told her to feck off and stop wasting their time.

I think I would go through the following stages:

1. Throw the balls back
2. Keep the balls until they are collected
3. if it's still going on, have a word with the parents (unless they look dangrous themselves)
4. Stop returning the balls, and bin them as they come.

I have a faint recollection of something like this when I was a child, but neighbour returned the ball with a good slice across it that obviously left it ready for the bin. No balls ever went into his garden again...