Well I've still got the ball. There were no issues by the time I got home from work, had been raining all day. The last thing I want is a war in the street. I just want my windows in one piece as if a window or whatever gets broken the parents won't cough up for it and it will come out of my pocket. I totally agree with lots of comments made its all down to bad parenting. Or total lack there of in some cases. I'm still waiting for a parental visit from the owner of the ball, near enough 24 hours later we haven't seen anyone. Doubt we will either. We won't be in on Saturday at all, after we've scrapped our Peugeot we are off into town for the rest of the day/evening so we can avoid the Halloween antics, we will be taping shut our letter box from the inside.
Parents are the problem. Take that nasty estate near you (usually one near you if you live in a city). The parents don't give a toss and shout and scream at the kids, and they grow up to be little arse-holes. Then those arse-holes have kids and scream and shout and them and don't give a toss, and so it goes on. I see it all the time and it pains me. Shites bringing up shites. They don't know any better and they don't care. And if you try to tell them you will get a mouthful of abuse at the very least. I know having children is a basic biological and human right, but the fact is some people just shouldn't be allowed to spawn their progeny on the world.
Violence towards people who grow up rough just reinforces their way of life as the correct way to behave. Also this aint the old days. You can't punch a guy and that be the end of it. You will end up with your house bricked.
Our next door neighbour has two teenage age children. One boy, one girl. The boy has a friend over almost every single day. They're loud, they pelt their footballs at the fence, and the whole family plays music at high volumes, up to 11pm at night, disturbing our children. I've asked them many times to keep it down and to be a little more respectful of our young children at night. I've never been rude, or horrid - just polite. My advice is.. you're buggered either way. Taking their ball and antagonising them won't work, it'll make it worse and ignoring them won't change anything. Be passive aggressive - that way it helps to destress you and nobody gets hurt. Calling the police tends to make them do it even more as well, as they feel as though you've 'grassed'. It's just one of those situations where you're doomed if you do, doomed if you don't.
I stopped a group of kids messing around in the building site across from my old flat. Two things stopped them banging randomly on my windows in the evening a couple times a month for six months after that. 1. Putting sharp, thorny bushes under the windows so they couldn't get close without getting hurt. 2. Chasing the last two offenders for half a mile at full pelt threatening to smash their faces in with another of my friends. I'm short and stocky and not pretty angry, so's he. There is absolutely nothing you can do to stop this short of moving somewhere it doesn't happen. Which is what I did. Luckily, I wanted to move into a bigger house somewhere else, you might not want to move.
Some good examples of why 'society' does not work. People, when faced with a problem (e.g. some neighbourhood kids causing me grief), immediately look for someone else to blame (e.g. the parents), and somehow default to escalating the problem (e.g. take other's property, damage other's property, threaten, assault - all potentially going to cause more grief and land you in bother with the bacon), rather than taking any responsibility to positively affect the situation. If you wanna make the world a bet-ter place, take a look at yourself and then make that change In my experience, diffusing and making light of situations is almost always the route to a better outcome than aggression - individually and communally. Some of the posts in this thread are so backward, which surprises me as normally most B-Ters are pretty sensible. Keep on truckin' peeps.
Am I honestly expected to spend hours a week being a positive role model to every scrote I encounter? I mean, I fully agree with the sentiment of your statement but I doubt it's workable, and if it is it's probably beyond Behemoth's remit as a neighbour.
Yeah, sounds just lovely on paper there Porkins, but the little scrotes around here don't listen to their actual father - I've seen them in supermarkets - what chance have I got? Bob and none. I'm pretty sure Bob's dead.
No-one's saying you have to adopt the little ****ers! Nor do you have to try and turn around their whole attitude to life, just try and have a positive relationship with them. Whatever they do outside of your little world is up to them and none of your concern, but if you can get on with them they'll be less likely to want to piss you off. Social interactions can be fleeting, but they still make an impression, and we encounter a lot of them. Why not go out to make as many of those fleeting interactions positive, or at least neutral, rather than negative? They all add up to the illusion of a society we have, and the world feels a better place when we can smile at someone across the street rather than watching our backs and taping our letter-boxes shut.
Lesson learned. Maybe it would have been better to let them just get on with it considering it wasn't really your problem, no? Amazing how many people in this thread seem to think they got to adulthood without being a little blighter on the way ! Kids are just kids. At some point (no matter how much the parents run themselves ragged) they will be little sods. And that means all walks of life, rich and poor (some of the grandiose posting in this thread makes me LOL). Honestly this is like an episode of neighbors from hell when they all say "But why me?" before phoning the council about something completely ridiculous.
I'm not sure whether you're criticising me or not here, but it's clear we have different opinions on this. It's not my problem. It's not your problem. It's not the parents' problem. It's this utter lack of ownership and self-responsibility that's making the world ****, in my opinion. Maybe it would have been easier if I hadn't gotten involved but in my own small way I tried to stop anti-social behaviour in my street and make living there better for myself and my neighbours. Several of my neighbours also spoke up against noisy neighbours, kids on the street, balls kicked at windows. They got grief from the kids but we gave thanks to each other. We have different views on this topic and we won't reconcile them, I'm sure, but I'm glad there are people on my side of it that keep trying.
All I am saying is that kids will be kids. Playing in a building site, for example, can be fun. I clearly remember jumping into a large pile of sand and finding it tremendous fun. Did I know I shouldn't have been there? of course. I knew that because I had a wonderful mother who raised me to know right from wrong, but at that age you just don't give a ****. That's what growing up is for. As you do so your mind matures and you realise that yeah, that sort of thing is kinda naughty. And that doesn't just come from parents it comes from all of your influences at that age. Teachers etc. That's the very pessimistic way of looking at it. Did you not do things you were not supposed to as a child? I've done many stupid things as a child, including (but not limited to) taking the guard off of a fan and sticking my tongue in it. The end result was blood everywhere, and me thinking to myself "Wow, that was stupid I certainly won't be doing that again any time soon !" Kids will do what you tell them not to do, not what you tell them to do. It's nothing to do with the parents. Nobody likes a busy body, especially children. You are just waving a red flag at them to come along and annoy you, because they know they annoy you. I've had my back fence broken by a football. I repaired it. Six months later it happened again, I repaired it again. My upstairs neighbour is a nice guy. However, he has a really boomy voice. He also works very odd hours, given he runs a security company, so it's not unusual for him to be talking and laughing upstairs at all hours of the night. Now with that I was faced with two options. 1. Go up there and point it out and quite possibly piss him off or 2. Say nothing and just buy a pair of ear plugs and put them in, ahh, bliss. I chose the second option.
Its all down to how you come across unfortunately, kids are very good at figuring out who they can wind up easily and get a reaction from. Our German Shepard was the best deterrent for the local youths, he wouldn't hurt a soul but if someone comes onto drive he gives them a right tongue lashing. In fact I'm pretty sure I've built up a reputation as the grumpy man with the angry dog at number 56.... just the way I like it
We ended up calling the local council who have a team of wardens that deal with this sort of thing. They call round yesterday, took the ball off us and are looking to return it to the kids with a stern telling off along with a letter drop to all the houses in the street to remind the disrespectful little gits parents that they are not allowed to play ball games in the street as written in road traffic act 1980.
