How to deal with a neighbor and their kids?

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Xantippe said:
The pool thing scares me to death. I would definitely lock it up like Fort Knox, even just for your kids’ sake and then tell the neighbor mom how you’d read an article about how dangerous pools are for kids and realized that you’ve got to have better pool security. “I just couldn’t live with myself if something happened!”

With the rink, bear in mind that if you move it completely onto your property (where it should have been in the first place), you run the risk of them just continuing to use it as before. Have a good chat with your lawyer, so you can truthfully say, “My lawyer says blah, blah, blah. It’s really too bad. It was so nice to be able to share the rink with you guys, but we can’t do that anymore.” Ditto the sledding hill.

I would do all this really slowly, prioritizing in order of risk, and blaming it all on the lawyer (who doesn’t have to live next door to them). If they keep encroaching even after all that, consider moving, but bear in mind that there may be issues wherever you go.

The upside of your situation is that these people aren’t lowlifes. It’s good for your kids to have classmates available to play with (not all rural kids have that), and it’s probably great for neighborhood security to have a cop in the neighborhood. You’re probably a lot safer living in this neighborhood than in a different one, or out in a more isolated area.

Oh, and make sure your insurance is adequate.

Best wishes!
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All of this! Blame it on the pesky lawyers. 👍 I’ll say a prayer for you, because I know exactly what it is like to try to be accommodating and then wake up one day drowning in regrets.
 
If they are hurt on your property, the decision to sue may not be up to them - it’ll be their insurance company, and they WILL sue. This can cause you to lose your own home insurance, endless legal headaches, jacked up insurance rates …
 
EasterJoy said:
I am guessing that they are friendly and generous in other ways, sort of like an otherwise nice dog that knocks everything over with its tail or slobbers and gets hair all over you. Sometimes when you look past a lack of self-discipline or social awareness in some area, IOW, you can see the elements of a basically good person.
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Yet she said she was afraid to draw firm boundaries because the neighbor, particularly the man might get angry and act out vindictively. Sorry but those are not attributes of a friendly, generous, lovely person.
 
sorry I came back to this thread because I am having a similar issue with my neighbors, but not as severe as yours. You mentioned wanting to have a giving heart, that is so good. However, to me my home is my oasis away from the world. I feel it is quite rude and unacceptable for any neighbor to infringe on that. It’s not really being charitable when you are feeding them and their children unannounced. They are not truly in need. Perhaps they are more truly in need of a lesson on how to respectfully treat others.
 
Deus_tecum said:
Yet she said she was afraid to draw firm boundaries because the neighbor, particularly the man might get angry and act out vindictively. Sorry but those are not attributes of a friendly, generous, lovely person.
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In these little communities, people with a tendency to carry grudges carry them for a long time. In a big community, you can just distance yourself from someone until they “get over it”, but in a small place there is no way to put in distance. So you suffer unpleasantness until things blow over–usually when you finally get the opportunity to do something for which they are very grateful, and they decide that you’re OK, after all, considering that you’re such a &*%$. At any rate, when you’re in a place where everyone relies on everyone else and every little tiff becomes a topic of conversation, great pains are taken not to stir that kind of thing up. And yes, a great many people fall into the category of “He’s such a great guy…well, as long as you don’t…”

Really, if you’ve ever listened to the stories from Lake Wobegon, it really is like that! You love your neighbors to pieces, but sometimes you just want to throttle them…and yet you don’t.
 
From personal experience, sometimes, with some people, unless you are very blunt (some would call it rude), they don’t listen.

Having lived in an area where the neighbors changed frequently due to lots of rental homes I had to go over the rules time and again. Finally we just put up a fence, which solved lots of the problems, kept the screen doors locked and were just very blunt.

If I want you over, I will invite you, otherwise, your yard is your yard and mine is mine. I don’t come to you home unannounced, don’t come to mine.

Needless to say, eventually everyone got the message. One of the kids told a new kid to stay away from our place, I was the crazy lady of the neighborhood.

I liked it that way, kept the morons at bay.
 
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