I'm suggesting that you and the neighbors who are also bothered by this woman and her children sign a document stating your grievances. No need for the neighbors to have anything to do with her, and knowing that she is surrounded by lots of people (not just you) who are annoyed by the appearance of her yard and her noisy children, she just may be shamed into doing the right thing.

and being told maybe that I or my husband and I should go into therapy because of disruptive, loud, disrespectful neighbors. It is unbelievable to even try to comprehend that.

^^

I am so sorry if I offended. I didn't mean to. DH and I did some Imago therapy before getting married, and it was very enlightening.

I didn't mean to imply anything about your marriage, just wishing prosperity for you both.

What Pal contributed does make complete sense. When I was living through the similar situation, worse than the noise, and complete chaos of the unmanageable kids, was the underlying terror that something horrid would happen to them and somehow it would be my fault because I was the only neighbor who cared to pay attention to them.

One day the middle boy ( the most responsible one) came running to my house screaming that "something's happened to Nick!!" the youngest at four years old. "I can't find him. I've been looking for an hour!!" He was scared !*#@less. Nick was in my basement coloring with my son. That kid sat at my table and shook. He was 13.

I told him then that one of the older ones had to be in charge and let me know who was watching the youngest two boys. If they needed Nick to be watched he was welcome at my house.

Yes I could have called CPS but would that really be helping? It was really stressful to be watching the chaos from next door but that incident was a turning point and I sort of started mothering those boys. Between myself and another neighbor we took over the rearing of the kids. I had no problem chewing them out when they were acting up and watching over them, we had a fairy decent relationship after that. With the parents not so much. A few years later they divorced and moved.

Thanks chloe. The LAST thing I want to do is add a wrinkle to your situation!

I'll pray your neighbors have a close encounter of the third kind or something ;-)

Oh chloenkitty, I feel for you. I am so sorry you are struggling with this situation. I have nothing helpful to contribute to this conversation, aside from echoing warnings that legal measures will not work and I doubt a HOA can have much effect (if the neighbor were violating the terms of the HOA- then what? Nothing can be done by the HOA, I am afraid. It's toothless in this circumstance.) Maybe a few days away from your house, with some peace and quiet will help recharge your batteries and give you more perspective about how you want to handle this since your only viable options are picking up sticks or accepting the situation.

I always say to my DH that I would be happier if we could buy an island and never leave it and have only about 20 people allowed on, LOL.

Can you try talking to the kids when they are being loud if the mom won't? Maybe bribe them w/ dollar store candy or something (be quiet for an hour, and I'll give you these twizzlers".) If the mom doesn't like it and says something about it, you can tell her that she can discipline them herself then. Is that legal or allowed to give neighbor children sealed candy? I don't know.

This would make me nuts. My one neighbors that I am reasonably close to in FL put up a trampoline which I was very concerned about, but he is strict w/ them not screaming. It only happened ONE time and he apologized to me two days later (I hadn't even heard the screaming) and said they would not be screaming again.

I just read your last comment, chloenkitty. No, no, no, do not become unpleasant with this neighbor under any circumstances. You will harm yourself even more if you do. It's not worth the toll that behavior will take on you. Because I can all but guarantee, your becoming less kind will have no effect on the neighbor and a huge effect on you. Maybe a therapist could help you identify ways of better coping with this- I imagine the resentment you feel toward the neighbor almost as bad as the noise pollution? Anything to find some peace ( I would draw the line at medicating myself over someone else's behavior though.)

Your "very nice and soft spoken" requests for less screaming is falling on deaf ears, quite obviously. Although your neighbor listens to you, she DOES NOT do anything to curtail her children's loud activities. Since your kindness and courtesy in requesting more consideration of your rights for quiet enjoyment of your property and your investment is NOT being considered by this neighbor, I would think that the time has come to try being less of a "nice neighbor" and more of a concerned property owner. Talk with the police to find out what rights can be enforced. Enlist those other neighbors whose properties are also affected by the noise and unkept yard conditions, and jointly write your grievances down into a letter to be delivered to this mother. I think she needs to be aware of the disturbance that her children are causing, and that these disruptions have many neighbors feeling that the issue is one that others are willing to pursue by legal means, either by police monitoring or calling child services. She may be willing to discipline her children if she knows so many others are annoyed to the point of taking legal action. It's worth a try. Since being nice to her about it apparently isn't working - it's time to be more aggressive.

I had another thought. What about a water feature very near to where you sit, with a water fall?

We have waterfalls in our PA house and they are LOUD but very peaceful b/c it is the sound of running water. We used to occasionally hear noise from a YMCA camp that is way way behind our house through many acres of woods (yes, noise does carry!) and we do not hear it at all once the water feature was put in.

Water features can be $$ but not if you shop around. We have a very large one but you wouldn't necessarily need that... just a TALL waterfall so you could get a lot of sound.

When we went on the pond tour they have here before we put ours in, a family had put in a water feature after a highway went up behind their house. You could barely hear the traffic sound.

Chloe, this is so sad to read! First, ear plugs won't help much. I know because I wear them. Mostly they make my ears sore.

You have to get proactive. You either need to ban together with your neighbors to fight this - perhaps get a lawyer and possibly form an HOA, or move. Life is too short to be miserable like this. I really feel for you because I have been there.

Are you sure the other side of the house is as quiet as you need it to be?

A bit off topic and not in re Chloe...

Because I can all but guarantee, your becoming less kind will have no effect on the neighbor and a huge effect on you.

I think that is so true! It's a good thing for all of us to keep in mind in life generally.

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”
― F. Nietzsche

Always a fancy pants in the crowd. ; )

Chloe, in the mean time, can you just make a small space for yourself on that side?

Have you thought of recording the noise from where you sit on your patio? You could play it for the mother of these kids, before you told her what it was. Then ask her advise on what should or could be done. If that doesn't get the point across ask if she needs parenting advice to manage her kids. Offer to pay for her subscription to Parenting magazine or another with similar pointers for mothers of kids her age are. I wish you all the best, your heartfelt anguish has caught me so strongly.

I understand how you feel. We have neighbors from hell also. I remember the mother would go to wk every day and leave the older child to take care of the younger child, and I would hear the older child shrieking, yelling for the younger child to come home. Her voice sounded like nails scraping a chalkboard. We have not spoken to these people for 20 yrs because of their despicable behavior towards our child. It sounds like your situation is even worse than ours was/is. I wish that we had moved also, but didn't want to give them the satisfaction, but if we moved we could have been happier somewhere else, and maybe gotten good neighbors. In a perfect world that's probably what you should do, but in all likelihood no. What you do need to do is to call the police every time her children are doing anything that is disturbing you or the others. Maybe when the police start showing up at her house, she'll get the idea that she needs to control her children. Maybe when the police actually see and hear about what is actually going on there, they'll threaten her with removing her children, and she'll get the idea that she needs to take better care of them. This doesn't always have to come from only you, you could speak to the other neighbors, and it could be a group effort, so that you aren't singled out. Good luck. I wish that I had moved when I had the chance. I am sorry that you are in the same boat.

@chloenkitty, I also can sympathize with the stress and the angst of awful neighbors. The house next door to ours was torn down 2.5 years ago, by a small-time developer who'd never done a tear-down/rebuild before. The new house is 9x bigger than the original, and the construction process has been a total nightmare -- workers who arrive at 3am, trucks blocking driveways/sidewalks, a port-o-potty parked at the property line--8 feet from my kitchen window--for more than two years. The builder is loud, rude, and totally unwilling to address the huge runoff problems he has caused for all the neighboring houses.

The worst was Christmas Eve. He moved his family in that day and lied to the water authority to get them to do emergency work. We couldn't leave our house to get to Mass because they had those massive klieg lights and 6 backhoes blocking our driveway, set up to work all night. I was mildly hysterical. The workers told me later that he had apparently hooked the sewer pipes up incorrectly.

It's awful to have someone who has eroded your piece of mind for 2+ years living in such close proximity. Like you, I have a busy job and a lot of other stress, and I felt distraught, powerless, furious and on some level dumbfounded that my own quality of life was wrecked by this jerk--with no consequences to him. I have to spend money to fix issues that he caused.

Ultimately I've had to try to get over my own sense of outrage. It's not easy. But at a certain point I had to try to address what is actually within my control--which is not my neighbor's behavior, but my reaction to it. I still rant a lot obviously, and we've bonded with our other neighbors over this. There's reason to hope the builder will leave as soon as he can flip the house.

My experience is that local authorities aren't much help. Noise ordinances generally apply to nighttime hours, and if you routinely call the police over kids playing loudly you will probably be seen as the problem. We could barely get our county to enforce its construction regulations, and even getting hauled off in handcuffs once by the police didn't change the way our neighbor/builder behaved. We all cheered--but he returned that night and a few days later pulled the same nonsense that got the police involved the first time (safety hazard for kids going to school nearby.) I realized at that point there was no value in escalating matters, and that I had to disengage for my own peace of mind.

Sorry for the long post, but in your shoes I would focus on what I can fix--look into water features or other landscaping that helps with sound mitigation, install an outdoor sound system so you can drown out the kids with your favorite music. Find a project in the house to distract you, start a book club or some other regular social thing with your neighbors so that you can find some source of happiness in your beautiful home. It sounds inadequate but these things can help.

kiko- I can totally relate to HATING the sound of Harleys. HATE IT! I will specifically check to see if destinations are Harley hangouts, or if there's some sort of Harley event before I go.

Totally ruins my enjoyment and thank goodness, we don't have any in my neighborhood.

When Rolling Thunder comes around, all bets are off ;-)

I feel for you. We also built our dream home 10yrs ago in a new neighborhood with a POA. All 3 or more wooded acres, a horse community. We have 5 acres on a lake. I am sitting on the screened porch, neighbors across the dam landscape company is there blowing - it sounds like they are underneath me. There are only a few houses on either lake, but when someone is sitting outside talking or playing music, you can hear every. single. word. At least the blowers will stop soon.

Crazy neighbors are everywhere, and moving doesn't guarantee you won't have one. There is always "one" in every neighborhood, and ours lives on my street... but at least she has 20 acres. No one likes her because while she seems to have good manners (soft spoken), she has lied and tried to manipulate almost everyone here. Even new owners will ask about her, saying she is an odd duck.

Our closest neighbor has three dogs. We love dogs, and have four, but we do not allow them to bark (much less non-stop) at anyone. If I go outside for a second, they are at our fence barking the ENTIRE time I am outside. Rarely do they ever step out to quieten them. I stopped walking. If I work in my flower bed, they bark the entire time. I stopped gardening. I was actually happy their older dog was older and having issues (don't judge me :D ), but they got a puppy to replace him before he was even gone. Two are large dogs, the other is small/yaps. It's very nerve wracking. I imagine kids screaming/talking loudly/playing would get on my last nerve too.

DH was on the Board for too many years and when he stepped down, he was ready to get out of here. For two years we have looked for the right house - we are both picky, plus DD1 lives with us so everyone wants privacy, and we have dogs/DH loves walking around the driveway/yard with them multiple times a day. I actually started hating living here. But after looking for so long, I decided it's not worth letting someone take away my enjoyment of our home, and we are happy to stay here a few more years.

Maybe for the time being, you can make you a small patio on the other side of the house w/out spending too much money. Large enough for you to enjoy, put up a few bird feeders, plant some flowers and enjoy the outdoors again.

Here's some info that may help.

From the TODAY show: 9-smart-tips-how-handle-nasty-neighbors

Another good resource is www.nextdoor.com.

My area's Nextdoor has been a tremendous resource.

Reading through this again this morning I think it is time to start calling the police about the noise level. As distasteful as it may seem, if you are describing the situation accurately then this is the next step IMO. Recording the noise level first and playing it for the mother was a great suggestion if you are still on speaking terms with her. Then telling her you will be calling the police every time you hear the noise level like that recording. No drama, no "you're a bad mother", just matter of fact. If she can't deal with her kids then this is the next step. She has to either make them behave or keep them in the house.

Tell your other neighbors you plan to do this and if they want to be involved then so be it. The deal is, police have been called about the condition of the property? Right? Has no one called about the "Disturbing the Peace" of the neighborhood? I absolutely do not mean for you to be unkind, but to continue to allow this to be an issue without taking every step you possibly can legally, is crazy. For what it's worth I did all of that with my crazy neighbors, called police, told the mom I would be doing so etc etc. It helped for awhile each time but the kids were out of hand and the mom was completely ineffective. I was finally able to get through to the older kids themselves and started having the younger kids at my own house with my kids. That was the biggest improvement.

We also bought a farm, as a get away, during this time period. We found 70 acres -YES 70 and it is surrounded by more farmland. It was in our price range and we started camping out on the weekends. When the crazy parents were home supposedly taking care of their own kids.

We now have built on that farm and live here and sold the old place. Guess what? I still have a crazy neighbor...another story. And yes police have been involved. As they should be when things get to a certain point.

::: sending flowers to all my (wonderful) neighbors today! :::

She doesn't have to know who complained to the police, and you say that you are on good terms with her, but are you really? When you talk to her about it, she does nothing. I think that she is just placating you, listening, and has never had any intention at all of trying to chg things. That's no different than if she were totally ignoring you. You're ending up with the same results. If you don't do something proactive, your situation will be the same 5 yrs from now, and you'll be asking yourself why you did nothing to help yourself.

I haven't read every response but I am a social worker that teaches parenting skills to parents of young children. I empathize with YOUR situation but I thing this mom needs help. There likely are services available to help her. I would find out about what's available to help her in your community and give her some brochures. Build the idea of getting help up so that she is encouraged to consider it. Most impotantly, make a child abuse hotline report every time you see those kids at risk. It can be done anonymously. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and authorities can help them get the services they need if they are notified.

If you can find another spot on the property that is quieter, I'd DIY a simple inexpensive pea gravel patio.

http://www.bobvila.com/articles/gravel-patio/#.V9GCl_krK1s

I agree with jlj48, she might not know how to control her kids and parent effectively so needs some help.

Perhaps if she ran across this it wouldn't be a bad thing? I mean, nothing you have said was untrue or slanderous...I wouldn't worry one bit about that. Generally, sadly, though...inconsiderate people generally aren't the best at spotting themselves as offensive!

A private message would be fine with me but I'm not sure how.

I read most of these posts and I am wondering something.....Have you tried making friends with the children? Maybe you have since your husband mows the lawn and etc. But could you maybe go over to their yard when they are screaming and shouting and just observe what is going on. Is it just the trampoline or are they just runnng around shouting? Maybe if you wanted to, you could join in their play to get acquainted and in so doing, correct them in a nice way, when they shout and scream. That way, you will by-pass the mother and maybe get through to the children. I know there is not much you can do with the toddlers but any of the kids above 5 should be able to listen to you and tone it down, when asked nicely. Maybe one of the older kids will mention why they are shouting or screaming so much....Just a suggestion. From what you have said, I feel bad that you have this happening in your neighborhood....we are lucky to be in an old estsblished neighborhood and the only children's noise is when the grandchildren of the neighbors come to visit.

I would report any time the children seem seriously neglected/in danger. I know the temptation is strong not to interfere in other people's families but that is how children fall through the cracks. I like that in Canada members of the public, especially professionals working with children, have a duty to report when they suspect child abuse. It helps make the decision easier to take that step.

Patrick O'Sullivan, retired NHL player, wrote a really powerful piece about reporting child abuse.

http://www.theplayerstribune.com/patrick-osullivan-nhl-abuse/

I can understand why a lot of people worry, “But what if I’m wrong?”

If you are wrong, that’s the absolute best case scenario. The alternative is that child is a prisoner in his own home. What you’re seeing in the parking lot or outside the locker room — whether it’s a kid getting grabbed and screamed at, or shoved up against a car — could just be the tip of the iceberg.

It’s so ironic, because the hockey community loves to talk about toughness and courage. In that world, courage is supposed to mean standing in front of a slap shot without flinching, or taking your lumps in a fight.

But that’s easy. That’s not real courage. Anybody can do that.

I guarantee you there’s hundreds of kids across North America who will get dressed for hockey this weekend with their stomach turning, thinking the same thing I did as a kid:

“I better play really good there, or tonight is going to be really bad.”

It just takes one person to act on their instinct and stand up for that child. That’s real courage. The kind we don’t always glorify in the hockey world.

You deserve some peace and quiet in your home.

I've heard Houzz is pretty tough on just deleting threads. You'll might have to rant and rave to get it done, so don't give up if you want it removed.

Teachers are mandated reporters. They have a legal obligation. I am shocked that they wouldn't have done anything. Maybe that only applies if the kids are in their class or something.

I've been thinking about this, and I wonder if the mother just does not know what to do or how to fix the problem. What, really, can she do if she has unruly and poorly behaved kids (like it seems like she does)? I guess she could bring them inside of the house, but then what- they just scream in there? If they don't respect her authority or listen to her, how can she stop the behavior. I think it is very hard to get control of even one bad kid, much less 6 or 7.

Not saying that is an excuse, but just saying that there may be no easy answers even if the police are called or CPS is called. If she truly cannot stop them from misbehaving, her choice is misbehave in the house and make her crazy or outside where she doesn't have to directly deal with it.

Mandated reporters are only required to report suspected child abuse or neglect regarding children they are directly involved with, or providing services to. I'm a mandated reporter and have made many hotline reports. It's my job and I am legally bound to report. However, if I see abuse in the grocery store on my own time, I am not required to report it.

I agree that if the OP is up to it, all positive influences can only help the children. Feel free to set boundaries with them. Explain to them why screaming, hurting others, ect. is NOT a good idea and what they can do instead. Help them to problem solve while setting boundaries about what you will and will not tolerate in your yard. Be upbeat and teach them other ways. They are definitely not getting that kind of influence at home.

Deleting my post. OP read it. If you're concerned, just edit/remove all of your posts, too.

As for emailing private messages, you may have to change your preferences (go into your name) to allow email. Once done you should be able to see the send message option when you click on the other posters name. When I click on either of your names, the email option isn't there.

ETA - just looked at mine. It's under your name, edit profile, account info, email.

It would be helpful if posters would remove your name from their posts too.

Just wanted to say that removing your posts and changing your screen name just makes this thread incomprehensible. Better to have it pulled completely if there's something you don't want left here.

While I appreciate your post writers block, I am at the mercy of houzz. I asked them to pull it and obviously they have not yet. Another poster here just recommended deleting the messages. I've never done this before but once people started to post about how violent some neighbors can get etc. I thought it was best to try to take down the post. I got a lot of great feedback on here and I appreciate it and everyone seemed to say what they wanted to say and I got a lot of great advice so as far as I'm concerned, it's OK to take down. I think it's ridiculous when the website doesn't allow you to delete your message. The funny thing is you can delete all your messages but the original one, that seems odd to me.

And I wanted to change my screen name for a very long time but just was not sure how to. I have that old screen name for too many things including my email etc. and I just didn't want to use it for everything like I used to.

Well, if it's any comfort, I think the likelihood of your neighbor (based on the description of their lifestyle) coming to a home decorating forum and recognizing herself (and you) is probably nil.

Olychik that seriously gave me a much deserved laugh LOL. So true, but one never knows LOL

Thanks for the explanation, Virginia Mary. It does seem very strange that when they regularly pull threads because someone else objects that they wouldn't pull one at the OP's request. And I agree with Olychick, but you're right, you never know.

Good one Oly. But how can we be sure the neighbor is not one who has gone to seed from endlessly browsing gardenweb and houzz forums? Her children screaming, running naked, doing drugs, and she happily online in decor heaven? (Sure that's not the case. just kidding.)

nap, that made me laugh out loud! Uh oh, too many of us just recognized ourselves!

Ourselves?! That reminds me. OMG, where are my 7 children? (Really, seriously, I'm just kidding. Really.)

Really? :-)