In most situations, the best way to avoid real problems is through open and calm communication. Sometimes, however, that backfires.

What would you do if your neighbor’s kids damaged your fence, so you let the neighbor know about it so it wouldn’t happen again, but instead, he got upset?

That is what happened to the guy in this story, so he tried to explain to his neighbor that he isn’t mad and it isn’t a big deal, but they started bringing up weird complaints.

This guy doesn’t want to escalate the issue, but he wonders if maybe he shouldn’t have said anything at all.

AITA for telling the neighbors to be more careful?

This morning I saw our fence was broken, I texted him “Hey I heard a bang earlier, I think it was the kids playing outside with a bow. I went to take my dog out and I found a piece of the fence broken. I’ll replace the plank, just let letting you know so they’ll be more careful”

The neighbor seems to be getting defensive.

Then he blames my dog saying she pulled the fence an broke it when there are no bite or scratch marks on the broken piece or the rest of the fence

I tell him this and I told him don’t worry about it we’re fixing it and stop replying.

What does this have to do with anything?

After a while he messages me, “If you think that my children did it then you should take a step back. Evaluate the property line and realize that your fence completely bows because they ran the lower rung higher and didn’t nail it to the planks.”

At that point you I’m annoyed and reply “If that was a problem with you why didn’t you bring it up earlier?”

This seems like a reasonable response.

He goes on to say, “It wasn’t broken yesterday, nyx was inside till we got home. We saw them in the morning hitting the fence with a bow and arrow unsupervised, then I see this and all I said was to let them know be careful because we have a small child and a dog on our side.

I’m just telling you so you’ll be aware I wasn’t upset cuz kids will be kids, but I’m not gunna argue with someone who’s twice my age.”

Yeah, this neighbor is just being petty and making an argument where there doesn’t need to be one.

Finally, I say, “I suggest next time there’s an issue on our property line you bring it up immediately, like I did, so we don’t have this problem again”

Then he says there’s concrete on their side from when we had the fence built.

I agree, the neighbor is being hostile.

I’m going to have the fencing company fix any issue, I don’t care what it cost I just think he was being hostile for no reason?

AITA?

Nope, he had a small problem with his neighbor, so he brought it up in a very nice way. The neighbor is overreacting here and won’t let it go. This is how big feuds can start. With that in mind, it is likely time to just let this go unless it happens again.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an apartment tenant who is being called petty for blocking her parking space with trash cans.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

I’m guessing that they weren’t really bowed much at all.

I was wondering about this as well.

Putting up a camera is a good idea.

Why is this neighbor acting so weird? They were trying to handle this like adults, but he got so defensive. You have to wonder if there is more to this story than is written here.

Based on what is written here, however, he clearly did nothing wrong and was trying to be a good neighbor.