August 1, 2026 at 7:15 pm

Neighborhood Frustration: Kids’ Soccer Game Becomes A Fence-Side Conflict

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When I was a kid, I remember a neighbor coming out of his house one day to yell at me one day because I was bouncing a ball off his wall when he was trying to watch TV.

Of course, I took it personally at the time because I was young, but now that I’m older, I want to yell in the face of my younger self to stop being an idiot!

Because that is pretty rude behavior!

Well, at least I never did it again…

Unlike the kids you’re about to meet in this story.

Check out why the woman who wrote it is losing her mind because of the unruly kids in her neighborhood.

How should I handle my neighbour’s kids kicking footballs against our fence and into our garden on a daily basis?

“My husband and I live in the UK and have a neighbour whose garden backs onto ours on the side, with the rear of their house facing us.

Well, that’s obnoxious!

The neighbour has two boys who play football in the garden daily and unfortunately have gotten in the habit of smacking the balls against the fence that connects to our garden and also violently kicking the balls so they go over the fence and into our garden, landing on plants, hitting furniture, nearly hitting us, guests, and our very senior dog who is mostly deaf and blind.

We have tried lots of different tactics, including keeping the balls until they ask for them back, just chucking them back and hoping to kill them with kindness. If the balls fly over and nearly hit us we do shout out (nicely) and the kids do normally say sorry.

We also threw some balls away because they were in our garden for over a month and we genuinely werent sure who they belonged to, no one came to collect them and there are other kids that live around us who play ball.

Welp, sorry!

The Mum did eventually come round to collect the balls and I had to tell her they were gone and our reasons for getting rid of them, which she wasn’t pleased about.

We also tried talking to the Mum more recently after a ball flew over the fence and nearly hit me whilst I was in the garden. We had such a pile of balls mounting in our garden that I had to take them to their front door in a full bin bag.

She got incredibly defensive, saying that they are kids and she can’t control everything they do, they have no where else to go on the estate with enough room to play football, saying us throwing away their balls was illegal, and started claiming that we are making her kids stay inside and be iPad kids, when that obviously isn’t the case.

This isn’t that hard to understand…

I clearly said to her and her children that we have a senior dog who we do not want to be hit, and that it has damaged plants, furniture and nearly hit us, sometimes with 3+ balls a day coming over the fence (she also just buys new balls if the existing balls go missing).

She kept saying she would pay for any damage but I reminded her repeatedly that it is not the point of the issue and its becoming very stressful for us.

We managed to come out of the conversation with what I thought was a good understanding that they just need to not kick the balls so high or against the fence constantly, and we even told them they could get a taller net that goes above the fence line, we wouldn’t mind, but the situation hasn’t improved.

This evening a ball flew so far over the fence that it got above our pergola and to the other side of our garden, smacking into the wall of our house and hit our air source heat pump.

We were on the sofa watching a film at the time by a window that gave us a clear shot of the ball landing near us, and I honestly thought it was a bird with how hard it hit the wall.

This would drive just about anyone crazy…

It’s got to the point where I fear sitting outside as I know whenever I hear the smack of the ball into the fence that I cant relax and am just waiting for a ball to come flying at me.

I don’t want to go to the court as its hassle no one needs, and I fear if we report them to the council (they are council renting) that they will know it was us and will cause more drama.

My husband is fine just dealing with it as part of our life for now, but its causing me a lot of stress and anxiety right now that this option just doesn’t sit right with me. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, please.”

Check out what folks had to say about this on Reddit.

This person offered some advice.