My 4 year old damaged neighbours car

[Mummmybear03]

Hi all. My kids were playing on our street yesterday and one of them ran inside saying that my youngest who is 4 years old had thrown a stone and it has marked the neighbours visitors car. I immediately went round and before even seeing the damage I was very apologetic and said I would cover the repair damages. When I looked at the car there is the tiniest chip mark. A few kids were around us at the time and I asked who started throwing the stones, because my son wouldn’t just do that he copies people. It turns out it was said neighbours daughter who is 11. The parents were very off with me saying that it is irrelevant who started it. Clearly it isn’t because a 4 year old boy will copy what he has seen. I can away still saying that I would pay for the damage and apologising. I got my 4 year old who was very upset to apologise too. After coming away I checked cctv recording and it shows the neighbours daughter who’s car was damaged, was sat throwing stones at another boy on his bike and in the street. She has also taken my stones from my garden and thrown them out onto the road.
I am a reasonable person and if my child caused damage I would pay for it. But the fact he has copied their daughter makes me reluctant. And they’re were pretty arsy with me even though all I did was apologise and offer to pay. They said they will get a quote and get back to me. Just to note that it’s such a minor mark on a 9 year old car.
Any advice? Thanks.

Moving vehicles
Strangers
Slips, trips, falls
Freak accidents
Getting lost
Stray/unfriendly animal

These are just a few examples I can think of off the top of my head why I won't let my 6 year old play out by himself.

Wow I did not expect this to blow up!
just for everyone’s information my 15 year old son was out front with my 4 year old and my neighbour next door who is very good freinds with me was sat out and keeping an eye out. It’s not a regular occurrence him playing out and typically this was the first time because his older brother came to visit and was out catching up with old freinds with my little one by his side as he wanted to spend time with him too. My youngest had thrown the stone very quickly and my son brought him straight home and told me. You people are so quick to judge! This is my first thread on here and I can see why people avoid forums! And I’ve no idea what yubu means either.

This was my thought on reading the OP. especially since he "copies people". He could be doing all sorts.

Wow I did not expect this to blow up! just for everyone’s information my 15 year old son was out front with my 4 year old and my neighbour next door who is very good freinds with me was sat out and keeping an eye out.

It's not your 15 year olds job to parent your 4 year old, and your neighbour clearly wasn't keeping "an eye out." Stop blaming an 11 year old child and pay to have the car fixed.

It could have happened with 10 adults next to him it happened so quick he picked it up and threw it and my very responsible son brought him straight home.

This is not you me first post.

Clearly your child wasn’t being supervised, what sanctions have you given your 15 year old?

You need to pay for the car to be repaired.

Presumably if you were out there supervising your 4 year old (who the heck lets a 4yo play outside unsupervised??) you would have seen the girl throwing stones first and been even more vigilant about what your small child does, or possibly even called him over, or called out "don't throw stones".

So it’s

11 year olds fault
15 year olds fault
neighbours fault

no, it’s your fault!

So your child literally grabbed a stone and hurled it at a car out of nowhere? How were they influenced by the 11 year old then? Surely once your 15 year old saw that others were doing it and your child was showing interest that was the time to intervene?
Just pay up. And I would suggest a consequence for the 4yo as well if you want to avoid similar happening again. They know at that age that throwing stones at cars isn’t good behaviour.

How irresponsible letting a 4 year old play in the street alone i mean yes you apologised but cmon supervision age 4 in this day an age

you can get paint pen online using the reg number to get the matching colour.

And yes, sorry, but I have to agree with others that 4 years old should NOT be on the street unsupervised. That's really irresponsible. No matter if he copied their daughter or not, he is your responsibility.

I would just wait and see what happens with the quote I would just pay it however you spin it it's still your fault and you could just cause a massive row. But whoever started it is irrelevant to the damage unfortunately.

Your kid threw it, it's your responsibility.

OP, you've learnt a valuable lesson by posting your story and hopefully it will never happen again.
The street is not a safe or suitable place for a 4 year old to play. They are way too young to understand the consequences of their actions and of course the inherent dangers too.
I speak as a teacher of 4-5year olds.

Hope it all works out for you, good luck.

This. Show some accountability

This happened with my son. He was at a family party with dh. I was working so didn’t attend. Ds (Asd) was playing out on the driveway of the house, a massive farmhouse with land so well away from any roads. Ds was 7 and playing with his 11 year old cousin. They decided to ‘wash cars’. By using stones as a sponge. On several cars 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️
Yes the 11 year old knew it was wrong. And quite possibly did encourage Ds to get involved.
But dh took total responsibility for not supervising his child when he should have been. And paid for the damage which ran into hundreds.
I ripped dh a new one for his lax parenting.
But at no point did we try to shift the blame onto the older child. Dh should have been supervising. He wasn’t. Damage was done. Ergo we paid for it.
Apparently the mood of the party took a right nose dive after that little incident… 🙄

@Topseyt123

So weird you've tried to start an argument with me because someone else let their 4 year old out to play unsupervised 🤣

For all those jumping on the you shouldn't let your 4 year old out , you'd be quite surprised how many people do the area I live in it's nothing new there's kids as young as 3 playing out not that I condone it my 3 are adults my youngest is 24 and gets married in September but there's alot of people do let there kids out without supervision

Parents shouldn’t let four year olds out unsupervised, it makes no difference that it happens in whatever area, doesn’t make it right, it’s bad and lax parenting.

You should have been supervising a 4 year old child. And yes, you should still pay for the damage your child caused to the car.

A 4 year old playing out is fine if the child is being adequately supervised by an adult.

The 15 year old clearly hadn't got the brief (and nor should they)

The 11 year old wasn't being supervised either if throwing stones (and at 11, I'd say hasn't been supervised for a long time to even think that stone throwing is normal behaviour)

@Mummmybear03 obviously you need to pay. Then you need to move on and not entrust a small child to an older child. And if you can't (clearly) trust the neighbour, you don't entrust the child to them either.

Its not your first thread. Why say that?

The child was also "almost 4" in April 22 so presumably has turned 5 now.
@Mummmybear03 in your other thread you talked about the terrible behaviour of your older children. Is one of them the 15 year old? Could he have encouraged the 4/5 year old to throw the stones?

Because OP said it was her first thread and it isn’t 🤷‍♀️?

Not sure why you bothered quoting my comment and rewording it to say the same thing, with a little emoji, but if it keeps you occupied 🤷🏻‍♀️