There's a couple of kids who play in my street, they'd both be about 8. I know where one of the kids live, not sure where the other one comes from but it can't be far away.
They've been ding dong ditching several of the houses in our street.
I do find this mildly annoying and it tends to set off my dog but I let it go, they're kids and frankly I've put up with far worse from previous neighbours so I just ignore it.
Problem is I've noticed these kids doing it to a couple further up my street. This couple is heavily into drugs, they're both very mentally unstable, (police are there regularly) and they both verbally attacked my children several years ago for riding their scooters too noisily at 1pm on a Saturday arvo (my kids are teens/young adults now but we all still give this couple a wide berth because they are so unpleasant).
The parents of the kid I do know are the "Oh my kid would never" types, I had to speak to them once before about their kid throwing rocks at our house but they pretty much blew me off and the rock throwing continued until my husband caught him and told him off. The other kids parents I know of and could probably track them down if need be.
My question I guess, would you try and speak to their parents about it?
Part of me thinks it's not my business and it'll be a valuable lesson for these kids to learn what happens if you piss off the wrong people or how dangerous it is to knock on a stranger's door. At least one of the kids parents probably won't believe me or do anything about it anyway.
But the other part of me thinks it'd irresponsible for me to turn a blind eye knowing that my neighbours can be unpredictable and volatile, God forbid something bad happened to these kids.
What would you do?
2 Replies
Doorbell camera? Won't help with the neighbour situation but you will have proof of them doing it to you and they might stop.
Perhaps footage from a doorbell camera is a good thing to direct to the police so that they have have matching identification of what you have described of them when you see them playing in the area.
This way hopefully the police can stop them and talk directly about the risks of their behaviour.
Sometimes when coming directly from police the kids are more reflective and will stop.
It’s a hard one I know. It’s such a difficult age of innocent careless somewhat harmless playfulness and yet is so risky and silly, and you want to help the kids understand.
What about their school principal being notified and asking them if they could arrange a visit from the police about this type of behaviour?
The focus for the school community could be on stranger danger and respecting boundaries of other people.
At that age I did some stuuuupid things my parents would have been horrified about.