Annoyed with nieghborhood kids

[xmx250]

Alright my parents and i have been living in our current house for like 9 years. Since last summer a new family moved in across the street. It turns out that these kids love to play outside. This is where the problem starts....... Their driveway is directly across the street from mine, it has a slight incline tipped toward my driveway. The street that seperates us is a very narrow "no outlet" type of street.

These kids who are all from the same family stay out side and play baseball with a frickin metal bat and hardball!!!!!!!!! I'm watching my brand new 07 Civic Si lay victim to these kids as they play with their hardball. its literally driving me NUTS. I know its only a matter of time before they damage my car. They are no more than 20-30 feet away from car when they are playing in the street. I've witnessed their basketball slam into my bumper when i was looking through window........ and i've also witnessed the hardball narrowly miss my bumper as it rolled under my car.

This situation has me stressed out. Everytime i hear the ball bouncing outside i get nervous and i'm constantly looking through my window. I feel like this is major B.S. One of the benefits of a family having their own home is so that you dont have to park your car in the street, you can have it safe in your driveway. But no, i'm actually comtemplating parallel parking my car on the next block over. I think my car will be safer parallel parked in public than in my own driveway at least with these kids playing "sports" in the street 20 feet away from it.

anyway i just wanted to vent. Anyone ever been in the same situation?

BTW i have a garage but it is rampacked with stuff over years now. I'm not even sure if its possible to clean it out............ i'll try though

[tom p.]

I've been in the same situation before at a condo. The kids were hitting my car all the time, I took pictures, shared with the parents....it didn't do a bit of good. I just kept hearing "kids will be kids".

[velobard]

About 15 years ago I bought a Toyota Supra and had a similar situation. One day the kid from next door, just learning how to ride his bike, rode into the back of my car and cracked the tail-light. It was witnessed, the damage was obvious and irritated me to no end, but the single mom wouldn't do a thing about it. First she claimed she would, then started hedging, then said she didn't think it was her kid after all. In reality, I imagine she just didn't have the money to do anything about it anyway, but that still didn't let her off the hook for her kid's behavior.

[cj99si]

Go to the parents let them know what is happening. so when something bad happens I wont be a surprise. Kids will be kids yes but the parents need to be adults for them. Good luck! I wouldn't be able to sleep.

[paradigm]

same situation with me only it's just my backyard property at risk, not my vehicles. there is a culdesac behind me that has become a breeding ground (literally). a few houses sold and new families moved in...and the house directly behind my property has kids that just hit the "run everywhere and destroy everything" age.

last week i saw the kids with all their friends over trying to get something out of a tree (a frisbee or something got stuck). they had a softball, full size push broom, baseball bat, and a basketball....kept throwing them over and over at the tree trying to get the thing out. the best part was that their minivan was parked directly behind the tree in the driveway and kept getting hit by the "overthrows". then, one of the kids got bored of throwing stuff at the tree and took the baseball bat/softball and used the side of their house to hit the ball against. nice kids. better parenting supervision.

sigh.

[metload1]

Why can't the neighbor kids play in their backyard? That's ridiculous.

I've noticed these days that a lot of parents feel that their kids own the neighborhood and everyone's house and property is their eminent domain. We've got a problem like this next door to us, the kids have junk everywhere, and I constantly see them running through our yard, it's really irritating.

Now the funny part is, normally this kind of thing is just annoying, but it got to be a real problem last year. We went outside and saw that the stupid kids had cut apart our pine trees and made a fort underneath. Now these pine trees have long since grown together, so the insides of them that butt up against each other are dead and dry. Well, to make a long story short the stupid kids were going to light a campfire in there!! They would have been cooked to a crisp. Plus it would have burned my garage/rest of my house down, as well as those trees are basically a fuse to the 100 odd acres of woods that is behind our house.

We told the parents and they didn't care one bit. No respect. I can definitely understand why you are worried about your car, I would be too.

[TRD-22]

Where I use to live, in a condo area, it was overrun by kids who's parents had no humility. They would play in the parking lot that was prohibited to be played in and would play with baseballs and tennis balls and ride their bikes and what not. Traffic constantly came in and I've seen many people slam their brakes when the little kids came out of nowhere. They had a large backyard to play on but no, they have to be in the middle of a busy parking lot.

The two families had no respect towards their other people's property and over the past 2 years things got really heated up. The trouble was that the parents were the "busy-body" type that stuck their noses into EVERYTHING that went around the place. They were the most condescending people on this side of the hemisphere who they thought they were God's workers on earth and the answers to your prayers. They had to be involved with everything.

Their kids threw balls that would come ridiculously close to the car or would ride their bikes really close to the car. It was very very aggravating to hear them screaming around and making everybody aware of their presence. In short, the anger elevated to us filing vandalism charges against them (as our car got keyed) and having the cops come on 3 separate occasions.

The moral of this story is that one should be careful approaching situations like this. A few wrong words and lots of animosity can arise. In my case, they crossed the line way too many times for us not to do anything.

[Tasty]

There's nothing you can do about this except park your car in a protected area like the garage if available. Kids are kids and they are totally within their rights to play outside. That being said, if I was in your shoes I'd be exactly the same way.

[kkreit01]

Man, I hear ya. Our neighbors think our playset is for the community. They come over all the time w/o asking. I guess we should have a fence!

[bigfoot]

Well, at least I've never had that type of problem with kids. The only one one my wife and I had were kids ringing the bell of my place and then running. I was never able to surprise them since when I was ready, they decided to do something else I've had more problems with adults that act like children with noises around 2-3am when my wife and I wake up at 5am or cigarrette butts on my entrance(I live in a townhouse).

Little rant from my side, not trying to hijack the thread, but I hope your problems solve ASAP, Bro!

Joey

[xmx250]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I'm gonna approach the parents one day if the problem keeps going but i know its gonna turn into an agrument. Its one of those situations where you just know theres gonna be anger involved.

it sucks that they had to move across the street from me, and they insist on playing directly in FRONT of the house.

[kompressornsc]

I had an issue with the neighbor's kids playing in my driveway (riding their bikes, little cars, etc.). Told their parents one day that with my new truck, I sit up real high and it's hard for me to see when backing up and I would just hate to run over them.
They don't ride in my driveway anymore.
Figure out some way to tell them so it's to their advantage - not yours. They'll be a lot more receptive.