To be annoyed at kids playing football

We used to live in a house with a parade of shops a couple of doors away. There was a wide pavement outside them and kids would constantly play football there in the evening until quite late at night. I feel your pain...the rhythmic banging of the ball on the walls and the noise of them shouting grated on my nerves. We were so relieved to be able to move eventually!

Can your local councillors do anything to help? If it is a private car park, surely the kids are trespassing?

I was surprised to read this as we have neighbours who are football crazy and practice until after 10.30 at night. The garden has been specially adapted for football and a private coach can be heard giving tips. Obviously another football star in the making……and one of the boys plays for the local junior team! I don’t mind throwing the odd football back over the fence as I get some exercise……each to their own I suppose. It can be irritating though.

My husband and other fathers used to take our sons and their friends on the park every weekend or sometimes early evenings to play football. They were never allowed to play football in the street. All the boys joined footballs clubs when they were young and into their teens and all played in different teams. If they weren't playing football then they were playing in the street or in the gardens on their bicycles and scooters. I love to hear children playing out but it sadly has become a rarity. We have lots of children in our street, pre-school and school age and we never see them.

Perhaps they are on their laptops or parents are afraid to let them out of their sight.

I absolutely lament the move away from “playing out” as we did when children.
Sadly the streets are rarely safe enough and parks and quiet areas have their own perceived dangers but if more kids “played out” and adults encouraged them and were around them, the world would be a healthier place.
A bit of ball bouncing is a small price too pay and instead of letting it cause anxiety should be viewed as perfectly normal kids having fun.

I agree that I'd much rather see children out playing football (or playing other games) than constantly glued to a screen indoors, but a car park probably isn't the ideal location, especially if there's the possibility of cars being damaged.

I absolutely lament the move away from “playing out” as we did when children

Agree 100%. However back in the 1950s/1960s there were far fewer private cars in suburban streets. I cannot recall children being allowed to play football in streets of terraced houses and always being directed to a local park or playground by some resident. In those days it was consiered acceptable for any adult to discipline any child. Now you dare not say "boo" to the little darlings without their parents becoming quasi hysterical.

I see lots of threads on mumsnet complaining about children playing with balls and trampolines in their own gardens and this is something you have to accept in a city. Children are noisy little buggers. Try earplugs or noise reducing headphones.

OMG! Have this problem with my next-door neighbour's boy, he loves football. When I first moved here, I would always throw them straight back, but 2yrs on and a lot of hard work on my garden, with all the beautiful blooms now showing, it's a very different ballgame .

He has damaged lots of flowers, knocked over my bird bath and damaged a lovely Hosta that was next to it and had grown so big, I was so pleased with it. I had 2 large ball prints on my patio doors and the first fence panel has lots of big cracks in it from his ball bashing it, I have even been out there when he was bashing his ball against the fence panel, I told him to stop!

I now have about 7 footballs down the side of my shed' between the fence & the shed. If he asked for them back, I will tell him No, you've done too much damage to my garden.

The other bug bare is these big trampolines, they have one next door and take great delight in jumping high, goading my little dog to bark at them! I knocked and asked the dad to stop them doing this as I need to keep my dog from barking. Before the trampoline arrived, they would sort of hang onto the fence, pulling themselves along, with their heads above the fence, doing the same goading of my little dog. We put some higher fences in and then the trampoline arrives . I am friendly with the family though and when my GDs come on a Friday, they all end up playing together.

On top of that, there is another trampoline at the back of my garden from the garden behind mine. There is only a small gap looking into the top of their garden, but that's where their trampoline has been put! The C don't go on it much, but last time they must have seen my little dog and started the same game as my NDN.

I have a new neighbour coming on the other side soon, I do hope there are not more small C!

Unless they were bouncing balls on my windows or rude and aggressive, I would let them be I feel kids are better outside than stuck on a computer, we must have irritated neighbours, just out there chatting and riding our bikes.

I think it's illegal to not give the balls back.
You don't have to do it straight away though.

It’s what children do and need to do

At least they grow up and go away. When I moved here there were 2 small girls at the back and they screamed and screeched all afternoon. Thankfully they moved . There are 2 other small boys in the street but you never see them out.

I suppose I will just have to grin and bear it. When we first moved here the housing association sent out letters to say don’t allow children to play in the car park. Then the following summer. I went out and told them they shouldn’t be playing in there, and they retaliated by smashing the back window of my car. Luckily the parents were very apologetic and paid for the damage. They didn’t stop their kids playing in there though! So it continued and finally the HA sent out another letter asking us to report antisocial behaviour to the police! They gave up, even though the kids keep climbing on the automated gates and damaging them so they stop working. They just fixed them and put notices up to keep off.

Oh for goodness sake just be grateful they are playing out instead of being stuck on "devices". If it bothers you that much contact Environmental Health to settle it, your name will not be reveaed.

Buy some ear plugs or wear headphones… IMO outdoor activities especially in the summer months are good for children up to 10pm maybe? Tin hat on…

Perhaps you can wear headphones or ear phones to dampen down the sound. I know I would find it irritating but I think it is better for kids to be partaking in a decent sport rather than tagging or doing more anti-social things.

So the consensus is I’m being unreasonable - but what about the safety aspect? Some of the cars drive in quite fast and usually the kids notice and get out of the way but it does worry me that an accident could happen.

Then WHERE are children supposed to get the healthy exercise they need? We are told that levels of childhood obesity and inactivity are rising enormously and that children should be encouraged to be more active. The dangers of too much screen time and social media interaction are well known. Councils have sold off green spaces and playing fields for decades. Large gardens are a luxury that not all children enjoy! Football and sporting clubs for children cost money and there is often the question of transport where it is not available or both parents work. Parents are frightened to let their children go too far from their homes due to perceived stranger danger and lack of police presence. In the past children played in the streets; I can just about remember this, there were far fewer cars on the roads! I would suggest tolerance is an issue here before complaints from the older generation stop this traditional play and these children go back to their screens or, worse, hang around in the streets where the devil makes work for idle hands! I would suggest that this is a society wide problem, where the needs of our future generation have been shamefully ignored. Lots of children play near my home. I like to see them active and hear them having fun. I am at a loss to understand how this person can feel the way she does.

I've had to buy noise cancelling headphones to deal with the noise made by a small upstairs neighbour playing football indoors. The parents think this is acceptable. I don't but the dad is aggressive so I couldn't do anything. The headphones reduce my anxiety. I don't have to listen to music, I just switch on the noise cancelling choice and it all goes away.

I think street and garden noise should be curtailed before 8am and after 9pm (maybe later at weekends), but other than that I am pleased if youngsters are playing football rather than selling drugs.

Buttonjugs I share your hatred of the sound of footballs being kicked and bouncing on tarmac but would find it easier to live with if I was in your situation as long the children are keeping the balls in the car park. If they are playing in such a way that the balls are going into people's gardens and they are climbing fences to retrieve them then that's not acceptable.

I live in a typical terraced street and have had kids (& adults) playing football in the street until after 11pm. Balls hitting houses & cars and going right over into back gardens.

It's not as bad now as it has been in the past but I'm dreading the next few weeks.

I feel your pain too, and I'm normally really patient and accommodating, and have teenage Grandchildren. BUT, I have 2 teenagers at the back of my house bouncing the ball constantly to throw it in a basketball net. Honestly, it's like Chinese water torture. I love to see kids out and about and NOT in front of their screens, but the rhythmic bouncing is just grrrrrrr!

In my previous house, where we lived for 39 years, a young family with three children under five years old moved in. Our only son had recently emigrated to Australia,(he was a £10 Pom!!!) and we were very unfamiliar with such young children, but we were both at work all day so, apart from weekends, we saw very little of them, 1 girl and 2 boys. The little girl was the eldest and she used to make up stories which she would read very loudly to the boys and also make up games to play with them and many other, some quite noisy activities. The boys loved playing football and as they grew older, the balls very often ended up in my garden but were always returned. I used to love listening to them playing and eventually they decided to adopt us as their surrogate grandparents as they had no extended family at all. We grew very close over the years and those three children became very important in our lives, although they could be very noisy and disruptive at times, sone times just a downright nuisance,overall it has been such a huge pleasure and more than a little satisfying to see them grow up and develop good careers and now to be raising children of their own. Had we objected to having our fences kicked, fence panels broken, a few flower containers smashed and the the odd plant flattened by the odd misdirected football, , we would have missed out on a lifetime of irreplaceable memories which I really treasure and the love and companionship of three really lovely human beings, who really are like the dearest grandchildren anyone could wish for!

I don't agree that the OP should have to modify her behaviour and take a course of action so that the children can continue to do as they please. The constant sound of a ball thumping against a fence, wall or the ground is annoying.
In this instance it seems that the children should not be playing in the private car park and should go elsewhere. I can't imagine why posters think that their own street or a park are so much more dangerous than a private car park.

We live near a close. The children used to play football in it but their ball was always coming over our fence , doorbell constantly being rung “ can we have our ball back” which used to drive us mad! But they’d do it early in a Sunday morning v when we were trying to have a lie in - we were NOT happy.