WWYD about my neighbor kids?

[InMediasRes]

I am increasingly bothered by the behavior of the kids next door, but I need some perspective as a) I don't have kids that age and b) they are not directly bothering me or my children.

We live on a cul-de-sac and there are always kids outside playing. We live in a condo, so all the green space is shared. It's great. There are two girls on the end of the street E, 7yo and M, 8yo. There is also a family with four kids right next door, two girls, A 4-5yo, and T 8-9yo (not totally sure of their ages). They also have two older boys in the 8-10yo range, but they don't want much to do with us.

My DS is 3 and my DD is 1. So much much younger than these other kids. But he loves to play with them, and the girls love doting on my baby girl.

E and M (end of the street) are very sweet. They are very friendly with me, they will come out just to play with DS, even though I can tell he's not their first choice. They show him how to do all kinds of fun things.

The four kids next door...well, they're a different story. T (9yo) is very nice and has a similar personality to the other girls. A (5yo) has what I thought, at first, was a queen bee personality, but now seems downright abusive. A orders all the other girls around. She comes up with all the games and tells them to go retrieve whatever materials they need. She calls them names. She pulls their hair and pushes them constantly. She refuses to acknowledge my DS and always entices the other girls to play something away from him. I get that the older kids might not want to play with him (or have me around because he can't be unsupervised yet) but the way she completely ignores him like he doesn't exist seems so strange to me. I've seen the two boys do it to him too, even when he's standing there saying something to them, they will look down or away from him like he's not there.

Yesterday, E and M were playing with us and with our neighbor's dog. They were chatting with me and the other neighbor lady, when A came over. She grabbed M by the hair and yanked hard, pulling her off of her feet. M shouted "Stop! That hurts! I don't like it!" and (this is the part that floored me) A kept saying in this sugary tone "but I'll give you a cookie. I have cookies for you after dinner."

I have seen A, after a round of ordering them around and pulling their hair/pushing them, go inside and get "treats" for them. Then she makes them all line up in a perfect line before she will divy up the treats.

I have seen all the kids play fighting or whatever, and that's fine. It's what kids do if it's consensual. But A doesn't seem to know what's okay and what other kids don't like, and she seems to understand that she can buy back their loyalty with snacks and promises to play such and such a role in their game.

She has never done any of this to my DS. She's tried to order me around a few times and I squashed that pretty quickly. I'm trying to be compassionate with her, but to me, she just seems like an abuser. I was 1 second away from stepping in with the hair-pulling incident, but M freed herself and ran away.

The older boys play very violently, like they will sock each other in the stomach when one of them rides by on a scooter. They have also come dangerously close to running me and my kids over with their bikes.

I'm mostly just not sure what's appropriate behavior for their ages and what is off. Maybe I am just over sensitive because I have a younger child and I am more concerned about safety issues? I also don't want him thinking it's okay to yank people around by their hair when they are yelling "STOP!". How far do you let it go before you say something? Do you just trust that the kids will figure it out on their own and hope their parents are teaching them appropriate boundaries? Do you say something to their parents (who are never outside with them to see this happening)?

I have no problem stepping in with safety issues, like the pile of wood they had collected to make a fort yesterday that was FULL of rusty nails, or when they're climbing on the fence by the canal, but this all feels like one big grey area to me. WWYD?

[lotusdebi]

If I am there, witnessing dangerous behavior or behaviors I don't want my children to mimic, and the parents of the children are not there, I will speak up. I would speak up about all of the issues that you named. I would guide them on ways to treat with each other and property with respect. I would speak up if they were disrespecting my child or each other. Kids don't learn in a vacuum. They need a certain amount of guidance. If their parents aren't around to guide them, and you are, then you get to do it.

I've been doing the same for years. There are kids on my street who love me. There are kids on my street who hate me. The kids who hate me are the ones who tend to bully, act exclusive (have their little cliques), and destroy things that don't belong to them. The ones who like me tend to be the ones who want to behave, who have been the victims of the others, and who have a hard time negotiating social situations. Both groups now listen to me and don't misbehave when I'm around.

Oh, and I tell the parents when the kids talk back to me, steal, seriously hurt someone, or continue to engage in dangerous behaviors after I've told them to stop.

[journeymom]

What she said. I've had the same experience. One of my daughter's friends was the domineering queen bee in their group. The adult women who don't put up with her manipulative garbage are 'mean' and 'strict'. I'm on this list. That's a-OK with me.

All the behavior you describe sounds normal, but certainly not acceptable.

[MorgnsGrl]

Am I right in understanding that A is 5 years old? And that most of the time the other girls (including her older sister) seem to "go along" with what A wants? That sounds like a little girl who is used to getting her way, that's for sure!

If no other parents are present during these play sessions, I wouldn't hesitate to "parent" all children involved, and that would include breaking up physical altercations and modeling appropriate behavior (acknowledging the presence of smaller kids, giving others a chance to decide what games will be played, etc). I'd try to remember that A is just a little girl who needs time to grow up, and try to banish the thought that at the age of 5 she is an "abuser."

[journeymom]

Originally Posted by MorgnsGrl

I'd try to remember that A is just a little girl who needs time to grow up, and try to banish the thought that at the age of 5 she is an "abuser."

I agree. People with forceful personalities become leaders. Hopefully she'll be raised with kindness and thoughtfulness.

[peaceful_mama]

this is a little harder than my next-doors...because the one sibling seems 'ok' to play with and is likely playing with the other two girls who are 'ok' quite a bit since they are the same age....

My current next door neighbors are children who can't play with mine without something inappropriate happening within about 10 minutes. I have tried it many times last summer and a couple times this year. These kids run around fairly unsupervised. (mostly token supervision--i.e, a teenage sibling who is present on the porch but ignores anything and everything they do from playing in the road to hurting each other or my kids.) They're roughly my kids' age.

I have flat out told my kids they are not to play with them. I feel I've given plenty of chances, these are kids who just don't have boundaries at home--at least to me it appears that way--and with another toddler to watch, I can't provide the *constant* supervision they need to prevent problems. (the other kids in the neighborhood I feel fine with them playing in the yard while I am in cooking or something---MY OLDER KIDS NOT MY BABY of course these two, no. Oh and I have a big window where I can see the yard in question easily.)

[LynnS6]

What you describe is far outside the range of normal in our neighborhood. Any child who hits/pulls hair consistently would be reprimanded by any parent near by. The verbal stuff is usually called out too.

For more physical kids in our neighborhood sparring (but not really hitting hard), wrestling and chasing are well within the range of normal. Socking each other in the stomach is not.

It's also pretty normal for other parents to intervene when things look like they're getting out of hand. We have a range of supervision in our neigbhorhood - from the token teenage siblings who are 'in charge' to pretty active parents. The parents will intervene (even if it's not their kid) when things get inappropriate.

For example, there was a group of 7th-8th grade boys and girls who were wrestling last summer. That by itself was fine as they were pretty evenly matched (actually the girls were in better shape physically and usually beat the boys). But it would sometimes descend into less OK things like the boys trying to pull the girls' shirts up or the girls trying to pull the boys' shorts down. Since they were older kids, their parents weren't out there, but the other parents would put a stop to it. Eventually the parents of the middle schoolers banned cross-gender wrestling because there was too much touching/pulling clothing going on.

So, if this were my neighborhood, I'd stop A the second she pulled anyone's hair. "Stop! Didn't you hear M? That's not OK, you are hurting her." I'd be highly tempted to march her home and talk to her parents (kids in our neighborhood who get violent get sent home).

For the boys, I'd be direct, "Stop, I'm afraid someone's going to get hurt. I don't want my little ones to see hitting. If you need to do that, go somewhere else." If they're unsafe with their bikes again I'd describe what they're doing wrong and what you want them to do "stop. You're riding too close/too fast to the little kids. I'm afraid someone's going to get hurt. Go somewhere else if you need to do that."

I'd also see if you can get to know their parents - what would their parents' response be if you sent the kids home? Are they oblivious but willing to work with you? Hostile? Abusive?

[InMediasRes]

Thanks for the input, everyone. I agree that A is really just a little kid, and as I said, I try to be understanding with her.

The kids all seem to have a very physical relationship with each other. There is A LOT of play fighting. The fights never seem to get out of hand and no one ever seems to get hurt. That's why this feels like a grey area to me. They seem to all enjoy some wrestling, etc (which does seem to involve hair pulling, though I don't know who would enjoy that sort of thing ) from all parties. Would you put all, even mutual, physical play to a stop when you were around? I guess I should since my kids are watching and learning from them, now that I think about it.

The neighborhood situation is tough. It's condos, as I said. The neighbors change a lot. We are renters, but most are homeowners. They are all of a particular, and conservative, religious faith, of which I am not a member. They all know and interact with each other on a very frequent basis. I'm outside that circle. I don't want to go into a lot of detail, but it is very. very. difficult to get to know and interact with them. I don't know how they are with their kids.... they are never around. A's family has two working parents who are seemingly never home, and I never ever see any of the parents outside. As far as supervision goes, I am it.

I know there are a few families with smaller kids, but they are never outside. Even E and M's family has a 4yo who would probably love to play, but she is not allowed outside because her mom won't come out with her.

I don't know. We're not going to be here long term, so I guess I should just let go of the stepping-on-other-parent's-toes factor.

Any more input is appreciated.

[lotusdebi]

I don't interfere with play-fighting unless there's a big risk of someone getting hurt (swinging sticks in wide arcs at each other, for example, rather than controlled stick-as-sword fighting), someone's actively getting hurt, or it's getting out of control. If you don't want your kids to see the play-fighting, you may want to redirect the other kids to a different activity, or ask them to take it where your kids can't see it.

[mattemma04]

We lived in a condo.Thought it would be great for our dd to have so many kids around. Started out great,but endly poorly with dd being ignored unless there was no one else around to play with.Part of it might have been that I was not comfortable letting my then 3,4,5 year old to run the condo complex without me.Perhaps the kids did not like having a parent nearby.

My suggestion is to spend less time with the children at the condo and get involved with people/groups outside the home area.Maybe have kids over to your house.Perhaps even offer to watch that 4yo you mention is not outside much.

We now have a house outside of a neighborhood.It is nice that we can have people over,but do not get stuck with neighbor kids we do not like.

Without an adult to guide them the poor behavior of some of the kids you mention will increase and cement into their minds.If you think it is worth it then spend your time outside making sure everyone plays nicely.Maybe you can get another parent to join you. I have BTDT and no longer want to parent others for the sake of having playmates for the kids.I still do this a little when we have kids come to the house,but usually those kids are already on the right track.

Best wishes whatever you decide to do!