In today’s story, a homeowner with a lot of land used to let the neighborhood kids use his land.

That all changed when a new family moved into the neighborhood.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

AITA For walling off my backyard because I dislike 2 kids and depriving everyone else as a result?

I live in a non English speaking European country and because of history that means land borders between properties are sometimes very weird.

Well that is the case with my house and the neighbors, all our houses are about the same size yet out of all the land behind our houses my area is huge.

I own like 90% of all land there reaching all the way to the woods far behind our houses. meanwhile all my neighbors essentially got tiny strip right behind their houses.

He explains how the land is used.

Now the part right behind my house is fenced off yet the rest is pretty much open and my wife and daughters like to use it for gardening.

The field is used by most of the neighborhood boys to play football on as it is the only flat piece of grassland around.

They always ask for permission to use it before hand, and I always allow it on the condition I get no complaints if I tell them to leave and they don’t litter.

I also recently had a pool installed to the far back of my property and fenced it off, this is important later.

The new neighbors use his land as if it’s public property.

Well this is where the issue starts. Recently a new family moved in and they seem to think it is public land.

I kept catching their kids running around through the flowers and vegetable garden and they even moved their grill on the field and held a picnic on my land.

I keep telling them off and informing it is my land, but they just ignore me and the kids sometimes won’t leave when I tell them to.

He thought he had cleared things up with the neighbors, but he was wrong.

A month ago the kids even climbed over the fence around the pool, and when I got them out and went to their parents they just said, “Oh we figured it was a public pool.”

I had hoped that was the end of it, yet these people build a fire pit in the 3 days I was away from my house, and when I got back I found it with a bunch of empty beer cans around.

He feels “terrible” but also feels like he had no choice but to wall off his property.

That was the last straw for me, and I hired a company owned by a buddy of mine from when I used to do construction work, bought all the supplies.

7 days later and a lot of money lighter my entire property was walled off, and whenever anyone asked, I told them why I was doing that and who they could thank for it.

Well now the new family is treated as if they are a pest, and all the neighborhood kids are gutted they lost their football field which has resulted in them picking on the new neighbors kids

I honestly feel pretty terrible, but I also feel like I gave them plenty of warnings before taking drastic actions.

It is too bad for the kids in the neighborhood who were respectful of his property, but it also seems like he had no choice but to protect his property from the new neighbors.

Let’s see how Reddit responded…

This reader offers a suggestion for a compromise…

Another reader is on his side.

This person points out safety issues.

Another reader is also concerned about safety.

This reader calls the new neighbors entitled.

I like the gate idea, or maybe he could invite the other neighbors over for a pool party sometime.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.