Good neighbors are priceless. A terrible neighbor, on the other hand, might turn everything into a horror. It’s a difficult balance to achieve. Read the story to find out what happened between these two neighbors, and then give your opinions on how you would handle the situation.
Source: Reddit
My well being and happiness are being severely impacted by my neighbours noisy children. They scream, argue, shout and kick footballs at the fence all day long. They only have one volume and it’s loud. The whole family just shouted at each other. Last year they got an enormous trampoline and positioned it right up against (their) fence bordering our garden. We are a terrace row, but each house is staggered, so our back doors are not aligned.
Our back door and patio area is about a third of the way up their lawn. We were aghast when the neighbours chose to position their trampoline right in line with our back door and patio table, where I also have lots of pots and plants. When the kids use the trampoline they stand higher than the fence and stare straight into our kitchen window, and they used to call out to us all the time until we asked them to stop. The noise and shouting makes the patio unusable, and as I write this yet another ball has come flying over. I darent go and look as I heard something smash.
We can no longer eat or read at the table because of the noise and the risk of a ball hitting you on the head. We did ask them not to put the trampoline there, and brought them round to show them how much it over shadowed our patio and removed all privacy. They declined to reposition it saying that there was nowhere else in their 80ft garden they could put it.
Given that there is nothing in their garden apart from lawn and garden toys this is blatantly untrue, so I have no idea why it cannot move a few feet away from our patio door. What do I do now? Ask again? Beg and cry? Puncture every ball that comes over and wrecks a plant? Write a letter? Build a cage over our table to protect ourselves? How can I make them understand what they are doing to us?
For context, I do have kids myself, all teenagers now, so I do understand that children need to play. However mine were brought up not to scream and shout, and I would not have dreamt of refusing a reasonable request from neighbours such as this.
Am I Acting Unreasonable?
