Children playing out

I live on an estate of bungalows. We brought our three children up here and they played on their bikes in the street but nowadays there are few children around and I suppose we've got used to it being quiet. It was quite a surprise then, a few weeks ago, to hear children playing in an adjacent back garden. Their voices are so loud! I was wishing for a volume control! ? They seem to be here to stay (although I never noticed the house had changed hands) so I guess we'll get used to hearing them. Their conversations can be quite amusing when the boy isn't teasing his sister to the point of noisy tears ?

I still want to know why Grannylyn bumped this thread only eleven minutes after the previous post!

I'd be inclined to go out and join the kids, right outside the grumpy old gits house. But then I can be a bolshy old git when I want to be.

One of the things I love best about East London, since I moved here nearly 3 years ago, is that the kids play out in our street. It's quiet enough, and with speed bumps, and the older ones look out for the smaller ones, but it's wonderful to see them running around having fun instead of slumped in front of the telly or hunched over a PlayStation.
Plus they all greet you with a smiling Hello as you walk past - this is how life in a community should be!
Why doesn't the OP's grumpy neighbour move to a retirement village where he won't be bothered by youth?

As a child I used to go to the Saturday afternoon showing of a film at a cinema about half a mile away with a group of friends. I remember fondly, after say a cowboy film, we used to gallop back and through our council estate to the end of a cul de sac with a grassy area and replay the film. I also remember playing on the street outside and being so annoyed to be called in for dinner or tea.
Yes children should be given the opportunity to play safely outside and it is up to us adults to help make that possible.

Such a shame not to be able to play outside my children were able to we had a little square in our area and we could watch them from the kitchen window. We had lovely neighbours and all the children would play together.

One of the (many) gripes I had when dd was small was that it was impossible for kids to play out in the street. Thankfully we have several very large parks nearby, but even now you rarely see younger children there without adult supervision.

To my mind, playing out builds resilience, confidence, and is much better fun than mooching around a garden. How do you feel part of a community if you're constantly indoors behind a screen?

We moan enough about obesity; we have the power to change lifestyles so why don't we do more of it? There have always been paedophiles and there has always been traffic.

I think as a society we have become way too atomised now. We pootle about in cars, we take our kids to "activities" (yawn) and generally keep them cooped up. Why?

We seem to have lost confidence in ourselves as a society. Perhaps that's understandable, but we need to reclaim that sense of confidence back, for the sake of our youngsters (if not our ourselves).

Can someone please tell Newquay and me what "bump" means in a post? Thank you!

I made a conscious choice to live in a cul de sac so that my children and their friends could all play safely.

Of course kids should be encouraged to play out -- it's gone on since time immemorial and gives them fresh air and exercise. It's frightening how soon they forget the joys of the out-of-doors. When DDs were babies we had a monster of a woman down the road who lay in wait for mums to push their prams past her house en route to the shops ready to pounce and shriek about how she had to clean her doorstep. One day I told her that she was a sad old woman and should get some friends, to which she retorted that she had lots of friends. I was amused to see all her neighbours looking out and laughing, but overall I'm sorry for miseries with nothing better to do.

Ban anagram and Newquay. I think each time a post is made, the thread goes to the top of the active list. So any threads which are finished fall off the end. To prevent that happening people can "bump" deliberately to keep the thread active. Would like confirmation of my understanding. Not sure why anyone would want to do it though.

I grew up in a cul-de-sac which had a large circle with about a dozen semi's around it leading onto two straight sides with 10 or 12 houses on each.
A group of about ten of us kids used to use it as race track on our skates. We would jump off the kerb at the open end, tear across the road up the other kerb and round we went again at considerable speed. No crash helmets or knee pads in those days! When I say we all had skates with iron wheels you can imagine the racket! I don't remember anyone ever telling us off! We were never bored in school holidays and always out and about.

This was in the mid to late fifties, only two or three people had cars in our road and milk, bread, coal and green grocery still came by horse and cart. My best friend and I were horse mad and used to race to be the one to lead the horses round.The Milkie, coal wagon and greengrocer were first come first get but we had two bakers, so one each and never 'took' each other's. We first met when we were 3, she went to live in Australia in our twenties, now 70 plus and one trip to stay with me a few years ago, we are still firm friends.

We had so much freedom to explore and develop our social skills then, I feel so sorry for parents and children today. It is so difficult to let them 'free' today, even harder than when I was rearing my own five who enjoyed less freedom than me.

A great shame that even where it is safe grumpy oldies are being so mean, especially when they probably enjoyed their childhood freedom. They need to think back!

I have mixed feelings TBH. Playing out, riding bikes and scooters is one thing.
Continual screaming (I mean that very high pitched screaming) is another, ditto failure to respect the fact that other people's front gardens are not public property.

In the past I have been driven nearly mad by kids playing football in our garage area, the entrance to which is opposite our front garden. They were continually kicking the ball into our front garden, right up to our sitting room window. It was incredibly intrusive. And the noise of the ball endlessly banging against metal garage doors was maddening, over and over and over. My poor dd was driven to distraction while trying to revise for her A levels. We have a huge park a very short walk away, and the boys in question, some of whom did not even live here, but would come after school, were easily of an age to go there unaccompanied to play football, but simply did not want to, because the entrance to the garage area made a good 'goal'.

The parents did not give a toss whether their kids were being a nuisance, as long as they were not being a nuisance to them personally. Eventually, because they were kicking balls hard against parked cars and damaging them, football in that area was banned by the residents' association, thank heaven.

Our children used to play out here, ride their bikes and so on, but they knew not to go in other people's front gardens or to scream their heads off. If anyone ever complained about noise (very rare) they were told very firmly to tone it right down or come inside.

When my son was young he played out on the front albeit with myself sat in the front garden watching him. We lived on a hill so he loved racing up and down on his bike or scooter. However the road was quiet , not many cars whizzing up and down . On the other hand my son lives on a busy road and his children are not allowed to play out on the front because of this. Recently there have been a few issues with the eldest , who is just 9, as the boy next door, same age, is allowed to play on the front with his football. Of course he asks our gs to play out too. It really isn't a safe road to play on especially with a ball. His has gone into the road several times and almost caused accidents. It would be lovely for them to have that freedom but unless they move house , it's not likely .

Now then, a different view and I am not grumpy in any way I can assure you. However, this can be a contentious issue. I live at the top of a cul de sac with a turning area for emergency vehicles more or less opposite so this creates quite an inviting space for bikes, skateboards and the thump, thump of footballs. Our front lawn runs along the top of the cul de sac and my husband keeps it very neat and tidy - for our benefit and the road as a whole. Also, we are at the top of a fairly steep hill with the bottom of it leading into what we call the straight bit. In the past we have had awful problems with children from the straight bit running wild because their parents consider if they are not bothering them, it doesn't matter if they bother us - and they did. Our lawn was regarded as public land for their activities, footballs kicked at cars and windows - even cricket balls !!! The constant thump of the footballs is beyond irritating. I would add that this is a fairly affluent middle class locality so really, the parents should know better, especially as there is a large Park which takes seven minutes to reach on foot. Yes, we and our neighbours would often remonstrate with them and tell them to play outside their own homes and kick their balls at their parents' cars and eventually, we obtained a sign prohibiting ball games. Honestly, we are reasonable and sociable people but I can assure you that the experience had a really bad effect on our quality of life.
Ok, I will wait for the protests now !!

Me too! I have no idea what "bumping" means... Please enlighten us, someone

There have always been moaners about playing children. I remember my mum getting complaints about my brother and me when we were young, in the early 60's. I don't think we were that badly behaved and it was always the same people who complained. Obviously, parents should ensure their children aren't causing a nuisance, as Hattiehelga has shown but I think most children's games are innocent enough.

My boys played out all the time, they were forever in the woods and so on. Nowadays, as far as roads are concerned, there is a lot more traffic which makes it less safe. Nor is there the safety in numbers that we had in bygone years. My boys would be out playing with at least half a dozen others, but today, I wouldn't want my child to be playing outside on their own.

Bump is as pensionpat explains above. A way of making sure the thread you're enjoying doesn't fall off the active list. Someone might bump a thread (by typing bump) if it's in danger of doing so and they think it's too important/interesting to disappear from view. grannylyn's bump was queried because it happened just a few minutes after the previous post, so there was probably no need to bump. There you are - clear as mud

grannylyn perhaps posted on the wrong thread by accident - something some of us have been known to do

The danger is of course traffic which has increased greatly over the last 50 years.
The danger of paedophiles wandering streets looking for children is of course totally rubbish. Most paedophiles abuse family members or children they have groomed via social media and these poor children aren't out enjoying themselves and playing outside. Statistics clearly back this up.

When I was a child, we lived 2 doors from a cul-de-sac where we used to ride our bikes. At the bottom of the cul-de-sac was what we called The Rec, which was a great park which included a cricket pitch and pavilion. All the local kids used to play in The Rec, we were all in and out of each other's houses, and when it was time to come home for supper my mother would stand on the back doorstep and call a loud Oooh-Oooh sound that could be heard for miles. It was the signal for ALL the kids to come home.
We were never supervised and loved our freedom, and took the scrapes and knocks in our stride. My older brother broke his arm jumping out of a tree, and a few years later broke the other one jumping off the swing I our garden to impress a girl - so just being on home turf doesn't make you any safer.
By the time I had DD, although we still lived in a pretty rural area, kids had stopped playing in the street so I had to arrange play dates for her, which I never felt was as much fun as my own childhood.
Luckily, where she and DGS live is a quiet cul-de-sac and the (slightly older) kids next door but one play with DGS a lot - he's only 4, but confident enough to go to their house and knock on the door to see if they're in, or they come looking for him, or as we come home from being out he'll see them playing and just go and join in, so much more resonant of my own childhood.
I take some people's point about how irritating it can be to have a football thumping against your wall, or kids ploughing through your garden, but again isn't that about community? You have a word with the kids, explain why they shouldn't do something, and in a normal world their parent(s) would back you up (actually, in a normal world, the parent(s) would have already taught them...) and the kids would have enough respect to abide by the rules.
Sadly, too often these days the kids haven't been taught about social cohesion through respect, and there are too many parents who get cross with you when you try to instil a little social responsibility into their offspring

Yes I do agree it would drive you mad constant football thumping.
When our DDs were little we lived at the bottom of a downward sloping cul de sac and the lad next door used to practice his shots which used to scythe through my flowers. I told him to kick the other way and if ever he became a famous footballer he was to invite me to recount my memories. . . .
My dear sister's late MIL used to say "a child's laughter, as good as medicine". I agree.
We do have a couple of boys in our current road who race up and down the pavements on their bikes, one raced round the back of my car as I was SLOWLY backing out. As he came back I wound the window down and told him he must ALWAYS look for moving cars and STOP as he couldn't easily be seen. He nodded and seemed all right about it but I know his parents are difficult and the boys run riot.
It's just not easy these days is it? Someone said about paedophiles usually target family members and not strangers-try telling that to Sarah Payne's parents. One of my SILs was a prison officer and told me to keep a close eye on DGD (I didn't need telling I assured him!) as his experience is that these wicked people are out there and opportunistic and see nothing wrong in what they do.

We live in a cul-de-sac with very little traffic but there are never any children playing in the street. When our daughter was really small -we moved here when she was 3- the boy who lived across the road from our back garden was an absolute pain and was always playing in the street by our garden wall and either kicking balls over non- stop, or actually throwing things over the wall. A Few times they narrowly missed our daughter when she was playing in our garden. He used to throw things at our cats too and we got fed up with him ringing our doorbell all the time to ask for his ball back. In the end we just refused to give anything back that came over the wall as we were so cheesed off. The noise was appalling and we were unable to enjoy our garden. He and his friends used to kick their ball up against our garden wall too, and we were afraid it was going to fall down. We spoke to his parents a few times but it didn't do a lot of good! Fortunately, he grew up and now lives somewhere else, but it was a nightmare while it lasted. There is a grassy open space just down the road where he could have played and a proper park with swings etc a few minutes walk away.

Eejit. GS 5 will be here next weekend! He loves to run around the circuit a few times ... He's the same size as the other 3 little ones and even has similar hair to one of them ?. He'd better not be shouted at!
Gettingon: Your second paragraph is just how I feel. You don't learn to be part of a community by staying in your back garden. I guess encountering the guardian of the steps is an aspect of being part of a community. Understandably their mum doesn't need the hassle.

I love to hear children playing but can see both sides we had a period of time when lads 13-14 playing football hitting glass front door they broke security light no apology parent s said they had to play somewhere I felt they were old enough to go on playing fields about 2-3mins away where people where always about so safe . There as always been paedophiles when I was small we just thought they were dirty old men . I think it depends where you live traffic being main problem .

I live in a cul de sac and my children used to play out we were lucky as most of the neighbours all had children around the same age we always sat outside and kept a eye on them and they had great fun. They have all grown up now and at the moment we have no small children in our cul de sac. I think it is a shame when children can not play outside although a lot of them prefer to be in on their game machines which is not healthy. I love seeing them out playing its part of growing up.