
Thursday, September 24, 2009
What to do About the Neighbors
SO I'm just looking for a little advice. We have a couple of neighbor kids, that just moved in about 3 months ago. Very nice family. Problem is, the kids 1st grade and maybe 4th grade come over at least 4 times a day. Starting at 4. My kids get home at 4, we do homework, then chores, then it's usually time to eat. After dinner we will run errands or if it's shower days they do that, or we do things as a family. But there is a knock at the door every hr that evening, these kids asking if my kids can play. Even on Monday, we were out working in the yard, and they stood at the edge of the yard trying to play with the kids. Even after the kids explained our Monday FHE, they left and came back 15 minutes later. We finally had to go talk to them. Then yesterday and Tues. my kids were grounded for not making their beds, and coming home 30 minutes late. They came over every hr. until I explained to them that if the kids can't play it's for the whole day, and they would come over when they could play. I noticed that they don't hang out with the other neighbors they used to spend all day at. And them coming to our house is fairly new, like 2 weeks now. I don't want them to be ostracized from the neighbor kids, but I can see this getting really old really fast. And I don't want the parents thinking none of the neighbor kids want to play with their kids. But I think they just send the kids out to play, with out knowing where they are or what they are up to. They really are good kids, and even when I was telling them they didn't need to come over 4-5 times a day, the older one was very respectful, and responsive. Do I go talk to the parents? 

Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Get a barky dog that likes to jump on kids. Our neighbors stopped coming around after we let them come in and "play" with our dogs - hehe :)
Seriously, no advice here. I couldn't get a mom to leave yesterday even after my mom showed up to help me around the house!
Been there. Done that. We just turned them away often enough that they finally found new playmates. My kids still play with them occasionally, but we're not being harassed 5 times a day (starting at 7am..eeek!) . Could you hang something on your door that is their "signal" of when it's okay to come over?
What is driving me batty right now is neighbors that ALWAYS send their kids over to play, but never seem to have all the kiddos over to their house in return. Super-nice family, but geez....take your turn!
I have to agree with Shauna. It is nice to be the neighborhood home and I always said I wanted to be that home. But not every stinkin' day! All the neighborhood comes directly to my home every day after school to play. I usually make them play outside for awhile (2 kids are usually still napping inside) or in the basement. I am more used to it now but in the beginning the constant extra kids were hard for me. C'mon you just had a baby. Send your kids to their home every hour (and if it is like my neighborhood they will be right back at your house 5 mins. later. "Their house is boring so we all decided we wanted to play here.") I think after turning them away so much they will find a different neighbor's house to torment, er, I mean, visit!
I second the idea of putting a sign out. I used to put a green circle on the door if the kids could play, and a stop sign if not (it was generally up most of the time). I explained to the neighbor kids the system, and it worked out well.
Hope you find a solution. I know it can be such a pain!
I think that's funny. We have difficulties too. We like to eat on the front lawn (shade) and hence, everyone can see us. Like last night, this kid comes over (we don't even know his name). And says, "ohh, pizza. I want one," as he's grabbing for one. What do you say to that? Oh well.
When we were little, my parents had the same problems except the parents would lock the kids out of the house because they didn't like all the noise or something so you couldn't really send them away because they didn't really have anywhere to go.
Hence, I have no good advice. Just sympathazing.
Post a Comment