Arrghhh neighbours!!!!!

[Madwelshwoman]

Really hacked off with my neighbour, well her children anyway. She has teenagers who for the past week have been playing music late at night (I don't think she's been there) and have taken to throwing empty beer cans/pop bottles on my garden. Am waiting to have a word with her about it as I'm not putting up with that. Didn't particularly fancy addressing the matter with a bunch of rowdy teenagers so will speak to the mother first as one of the items was a glass bottle and I dread to think what would have happened if it had smashed and my kids had cut themselves!!

This is very unpleasant for you and like you say, potentially dangerous for your children. Did you just want to vent off steam here? Or were you looking for advice?

I don't know what kind of area you live but am assuming for the purposes of this post that you don't live somewhere where even the 12 year olds carry knives.

I would have thought the best thing to do would be to give the teenagers a chance to make amends and be responsible. If they have been having drinking sessions while their Mum is away, they may not realise how noisy they are being and may have got themselves so drunk they do things they wouldn't do when sober - littering your garden etc. I know from experience that you just don't think about other people in these situations. Your neighbours children might just not be very good at resisting the peer pressure to chuck the cans over the hedge. Can you face the teenagers when they are not offending? When they've just woken up they are usually a bit calmer! Point out why it is anti-social behaviour and ask them to clean up your garden or if you have already cleaned up, return the empty bottles/cans to them. Tell them you will be having a word with the mother if it happens again.

Obviously you know your neighbours kids and I don't. I might be way off the mark. I'm just trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here. I think teenagers usually respond better when you treat them as though they are capable of being adults.