Yesterday, while returning home from my morning run, I encountered my neighbor, from across the street, and eight of her friends. They were sitting on the front lawn as I approached my house. I greeted the neighbor, who is 13 years old, engaged in about a minute of small talk and continued into my house. This afternoon while I was out fiddling with my mother’s plants on the front lawn, the girl’s mother approached me. The conversation started off in a standard way “nice weather, nice plants, nice shirt, etc.” but then she came out with a random request. “I would appreciate it if the next time you see all of those kids hanging out at my house unsupervised, you would tell them to leave.” She then proceeded to lecture me about how teens were more susceptible to give in to drugs and sex when unsupervised. When the conversation was over, I felt pretty guilty. Here I am contributing to teenage pregnancy and drug abuse. But then I started to think about it. Why is it my job to enforce her rules?
This has not been the first time that I have been asked, by a parent, to supervise a child. Various neighbors in my development have asked me to take their children sledding, walk them to the park across the highway, watch them while they rollerblade around the street, kick the soccer ball around with them and play catch with them. The difference, in these situations, was that the children were all under the age of 10.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem playing catch with junior in the common area or working on his soccer kick. I do, however, start to question being asked to provide the only source of supervision for your child, mainly because you are entrusting your child’s care into the hands of a guy who you do not know personally. I have not lived here in over three years. These families are all new and therefore do not really know me. The only reason that I feel unable to decline any of these parents’ requests is because when I was growing up, all of the parents and older kids looked out for the well being of the little ones.
I was wondering how the Doper community felt about child supervision. Is it our duty as neighbors to assist in the supervision of everyone else’s children?
How were you supposed to know that they were unsupervised or not there with permission?
I have, in the past, stopped children - and a 13-year old is still a child - from doing silly things, or cautioned them, or suggested that what they were doing / about to do was really not sensible. That’s part of being an adult in a society. Someday I’m going to grow old and need people to look after me, pay taxes to pay my bus pass, etc, and I’d like them to be alive to do that.
“Duty” is a strong word, but it is right neighborly of you to do so. If my neighbor doesn’t like kids for some reason and doesn’t want to watch my (hypothetical) kids, I won’t think the worse of him for it.
And certainly if she was trying to make you feel guilty for not telling those other kids to leave, that’d be absurd of her: how on earth were you to know what her rules were? The only way her request is reasonable is if she was asking it of you as a big favor: she’s asking you to get in a confrontation with other people in a way that’s going to subject you to scorn and attitude, and whether or not it’s wise of you to acquiesce, it’s gonna be unpleasant to do so. Taking a kid to rollerblade is fun; enforcing her house rules is not. She needs to acknowledge that.
Mostly, though she needs to say to her kid, “I don’t give a shit if Frosted Glass said it was okay for you to hang out here–he’s not your mother, and you’re still grounded for having your friends over when I said you couldn’t!” This is an issue between her and her kid, not between her and you and her kid.
As long as you’re smiling and cheerful to your neighbors, and lending a hand in case of an emergency, you’re fulfilling what duties you have. If you take a kid to go rollerblading, that’s being Right Neighborly. What she wants is being The Best Guy* On the Block.
It is your *right *to discipline any undisciplined children as you see fit (verbal discipline only, in this day and age.)
It is your *opportunity *to Be a Good Neighbor if asked to do a favor.
It is never your *obligation *to parent a child who is not yours unless you have been paid to do so.
I make sure my neighbors know that I have zero problem with them telling my kids to knock it off, stop doing that, go home or whatever. (I make sure they know it because too many people today are afraid they’ll get harrassed or sued for raising their voice at another person’s child. I would never do that.) But I also don’t expect that this absolves me from having to supervise and discipline my own children.
I agree that telling a bunch of well-behaved teenagers that they have to go away because x’s mom doesn’t want them over is a large enough hassle that it falls under the Big Favor category. Thus you may choose to do it or not, but you should not feel guilty if you don’t, and you really shouldn’t feel guilty because you didn’t know her rule before she told it to you.
Frankly, if it was me, the next time this happened, I’d wave the girl over to my yard and say something like, “Look, your mom told me she doesn’t want your friends hanging out when she’s not home. Would you like to tell them to go home, or should I come play “Mean Grumpy Neighbor” and scare them off for you?” This gives her the choice of how to handle it, which she’ll appreciate.
It isn’t, and no. I would have told her I would simply refrain from conversing with her children under any circumstance, rather than risk another irritating lecture. The regulation of her child’s social life, especially when it runs afoul of their Constitutional right to associate with whoever they choose, so long as it’s done lawfully, is well beyond your responsibility as a concerned citizen.
“Hey neighbor, nice to see you too. I noticed that your kids are hanging out unsupervised again, and I’d love to help out. The next time I see it, I’ll call Child Protective Services.”
I must have missed where Frosted Glass said that. I think he is being darn nice not to have put this in the Pit - he is so obviously not guilty of anything. Anyone else see the hypocricy of a mother who leaves her kid unsupervised complaining about Frosted Glass not supervising? Not that a 13 year old should be all the time, or that a lot of kids get in trouble with drugs on the front lawn.
As for the question, at times we have received and made requests to check on unsupervised kids. But no one has ever assumed that we should. And no one who has ever made the request would have considered a bunch of kids on the front lawn something to be concerned about.
I don’t understand this sentiment. At some point you have to release your spawn into the wild, and 13 is certainly a reasonable age to do so. Surely if we heard of a 13 year old who was monitored every waking minute we would be outraged at the parents for coddling/smothering them. But when asked to keep an eye on them, as 13 year olds need, we say we are going to call Child Services and call them a twit? Give me a break.
Although I agree with the OP on one point. 8 13ish year olds hanging out in the front yard certainly isn’t any cause for alarm.
The issue isn’t “keeping an eye on”. The issue is an arbitrary standard of propriety, and the neighbor’s absurd request to help enforce it. Hey, if I saw one of my neighbors’ kids lighting cats on fire or whatever, I’ll very happily bring it to their attention. Gaggle of girls on the front lawn? Not my problem, lady.
Of course it’s not cause for alarm. But Fat Chance’s neighbor seems to think so, and got upset when the NEIGHBORS didn’t discipline her own child for something stupid.
Why should he have thought to yell at a neighbor’s kid for sitting quietly with a group of her friends? That’s insane.
Upset? She made a request, as far as I can tell the worst thing was a “lecture” about her reasoning, which sounds more like an explanation than a lecture but I was not there.
I’m a little confused about whose front lawn the kids were hanging out on. Was it the lawn of FG’s house, or the neighbor kid’s own lawn?
If the former, I can just barely see that Neighbor Mom might have a point, if I squint real hard. She’s basically warning Frosted that he shouldn’t let a bunch of teens treat his unsupervised property as a hangout spot where they can get up to stuff. (Although as noted by others, I somehow doubt that a group of 13-year-olds is going to be experimenting with drugs or sex out on the neighbor’s front lawn. Unless there’s a really high hedge or something.)
If, on the other hand, Neighbor Mom was asking Frosted to kick her daughter’s friends off her own front lawn, that’s ridiculous. As Quartz said, how are you supposed to be able to tell whether the kids are unsupervised, as opposed to Neighbor Mom or somebody keeping half an eye on them from inside the house?
Anyway, I would think that that strategy would be counterproductive. If there really isn’t anybody around at Neighbor Mom’s place to supervise the kids, and Frosted plays Mean Grumpy Neighbor and tells them to go away when they’re hanging out on the lawn, aren’t they just going to go indoors to get away from him? And then they really will be able to get up to stuff unsupervised.
Sure, if you actually see them making trouble, as Loopydude says, it’s arguably your neighborly duty to take some steps. But just hanging out? No.
Asking somebody now and then to actively care for or play with your grade-school child, on the other hand, is a reasonable neighborly request. But it definitely counts as a favor as well as a non-trivial responsibility, so you should never feel bad about saying no if you don’t have time or don’t feel like it.
I don’t recall a request for supervision until after the incident.
Now, if I had been asked to watch out, and saw a bunch of kids on the lawn, I would have thought how well behaved they were being to be out in the open and not in the house perhaps getting into trouble. If a neighbor gave me this complex set of rules to enforce, I’d politely beg off. If neighbors expected me to enforce a complex set of rules I should learn through mind reading, I’d think they were idiots.
My reading of the OP was that Frosted Glass was supposed to know that the kids hanging out was wrong. If I say to someone “I’d appreciate it if your cat doesn’t poop all over my lawn” I’m expecting that reasonable people know this is not a good thing. If someone says “I’d appreciate it if you threw my newspaper on the porch when it’s raining” and then harangued me about neighbors not helping one another, I’d be annoyed. It’s something I’d happily do when asked politely, but something I can’t be expected to do automatically.
Is it at all possible that the woman thought one or more of the kids were yours? To me, that’s the ***only ***circumstance in which you’d have any supervisory obligation. Otherwise, I’d ask her whether she has so many kids, she can’t remember which are her responsibility.
I agree that the woman had no business asking the OP to supervise her teenage daughter. That is a ridiculous request, and I would advise you, Frosted, to go over there and inform her that you cannot supervise her daughter when she’s not at home. It’s utterly unreasonable, and you will have to tell her so or she’ll hold you responsible and yell at you next time it happens.
A quite different scenario is neighbors keeping a weather eye out for small children running around the street. “Hey, those are my flowers, please don’t pick them,” or whatever–it’s nice when neighbors are friendly and look out for each other. That doesn’t mean it’s OK for people to expect you to babysit, it just means there’s a safety net of more than one person, should the need arise.
I should have clarified. The kids were hanging out on my neighbors front lawn across the street from my house.
Hahaha, I am barely 22.
This is precisely my sentiment. I would like to applaud the parents who retained their lessons in politeness from Kindergarten. It is the parents who tell me to watch their child and then disappear from sight for a few hours that get to me the most. In the situation in the OP however, my feelings are not nearly as strong.
OMFG, the kids weren’t hanging out on your lawn, none of them were your kids (I presume)…why in God’s name would someone think you have any responsibility at all for this? Because you said hi to one of them? That woman is on drugs!