I think my neighbor kids are out to get me. I am totally convinced they think I am some mean old bitty or at the very least the crazy cat lady on the corner.
We live on a corner lot in a nice quiet neighborhood in the burbs. Our house sat vacant for a number of months before we bought it so the neighbor kids thought it was a great place to play. They played in the side yard, cut the corner of the lot to and from their house and I think there may have even been a frisbee on our roof when we moved in.
Anyway… we have a neighbor that has 11 children (no multiples). These children are all homeschooled. Ergo, around the neighborhood all day. The youngest was just an infant and the oldest was just off to college. The youngest is now 3ish. These children run around the neighborhood all day and I have no clue if they even get their schooling done. The mother is never home, the father works like 20 hours a day. He would have to seeing as they have so many people in that house. Their yard is a pigstye, they have like 12 cars that don?t run, garbage blows from their yard into mine, their dogs use my flowerbeds as a place to do their business and their cats eat the birds I so diligently feed. They are the bane of my existence (except my hair). Prior to us moving in CPS was called on this family because one neighbor found the second youngest wandering 2 blocks away without shoes when he was 2. The children were playing in the snow with no coats, the girls never have their hair brushed and that second youngest… he still wanders the neighborhood without shoes. Needless to say these children are raised in an unconventional manner.
Since moving in I have chased children out of our yard repeatedly. Kids cut through our yard, they built a snowman in our yard 2 years back, and one little girl has been spied eating the strawberries out of my garden. So what do I do? I get on their cases. I am forever telling these kids to stop cutting through my yard, please don?t play hide and seek behind my Rhododendron at 11:00 at night when the shrub is on the other side of my bedroom wall. Needless to say I am harping on these kids constantly. The most recent snow has just brought out the old bitty in me. For chrissake they tromped all through my perennial garden. They most certainly have destroyed any Iris that had a chance of coming up this year. My 2 year old is bad enough. I don?t need the neighbor kids doing it too.
I am pretty convinced that the neighbor kids hate me. I get snide looks from them as they are walking their twenty million dogs, and I am sure they are the ones who egged my house. Who else would have done it. Rhonda and Steph have both professed their innocence. So the latest thing to back up my story is that we built the boy?s first snowman the other day. Of which he was thoroughly unimpressed. The next day our snowman lay in a giant heap on the ground. Destroyed. Poor snowman. I am sure it was the kids. The trusty husband thinks it was just the melting snow and it just fell over. I am totally paranoid here. I think the neighbor kids are out to get me. Really I do. Maybe I?m just gun shy after the whole egging thing.
So what do you think? Am I being too hard on the kids for cutting through my yard. Should I just pick my battles or should I try to teach these hooligans just a little bit of respect for others property. Of course by the looks of theirs it is a long shot. I would go over and talk to their mother, but the filth of their house frightens me and she is never home. Besides how would that look, “um Kim… I think your son?s egged my house.”
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*It does break my heart that these children are not looked after as well as they should be. I see it the most in the second youngest. When I am out in the garden he tries to talk to me constantly. I befriended him once, but unfortunately that was a bit of a mistake. The child is so starved for attention that he will glom onto anyone who even smiles at him. When we were cutting in our flower beds all the neighborhood children came one night to help me pick up sod. They thought it was great. After that this little one wanted to be my best friend. While this is all well and good and I would have done so the child knows no personal boundaries. From what I understand others in the neighborhood have tried to be this kid?s friend and they find him wandering about in their back yards and such. He just seems like such a lonely little boy.
Good news is they must be getting some kind of schooling because I haven?t seen a single one all day.