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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Grace Hoffman

'My neighbours scream and call police if our teenagers stay in garden past curfew'

Neighbours have a tendency to be noisy without realising, but those at the receiving end of all the racket and clatter know all too well how stressful it is.

One mum has lashed out at her neighbour's noise complaints, however, as she thinks they are being unreasonable in their grumbles.

The neighbours were so adamant on putting a stop to the woman's children's noise, that they called the police when the teenagers hadn't headed back inside just minutes past their 10pm 'curfew'.

Taking to popular forum site Mumsnet, the anonymous parent defended the noise as she encourages her children to focus on "loving the outdoors" rather than being glued to electronic devices.

She explained: "My children, who are young teenagers, love being outside. I encourage them to avoid them being on screens too much. We've lived in our current house for almost three years - this is our third summer here."

The neighbours called the police 'two minutes' after the 10pm curfew (stock photo) (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The woman went on: "Recently, my neighbours (I only have neighbours on one side) have taken a huge disliking to them playing in the garden. I spoke to the gentleman and we agreed a mutually acceptable time for them to stop playing was 10pm. I enforce this if they forget, but they are very conscious of the time limit.

"Last night (Saturday) they went over by two minutes, so got really told off by the neighbour. I could hear the lady screaming at them that they are disrespectful and should be in bed by 10pm. My younger one was mortified and couldn't apologise enough, but she was livid.

"The screaming attracted my attention at the time, so I also apologised, but she said she was calling the police as we were disturbing their peace. She and her husband then spent the next 20 minutes shouting at each other.

"Well, the police turned up today to speak to me, unfortunately, we were out, but I saw them on my cameras."

Seeking advice for the awkward predicament, the woman turned to Mumsnet users for ideas on how to break the tension.

"What do I do?" She questioned. "I really do dislike falling out with anybody. I understand that we all have different tolerance limits. I want to address it with them, but without making it worse or getting into a neighbour feud.

She added: "I'm almost tempted to say that when they let their dog out to bark from 6am onwards, or do their glass recycling before 8am at a weekend is outside of my tolerance limits, but I say nothing to keep the peace - but if I say that does it look like tit for tat?"

Since sharing the thread online, the woman's post has raked in over 240 comments to date - where people fled to the comment section in a hot debate.

One person advised: "You can make noise up until 11pm, tell them to jog on."

On the other hand, someone people thought that the 10pm timeframe was too late, as they wrote: "Tbh I think 10pm is a bit late, surely it's dark by then, what exactly are they doing outside? I would move it to 9pm and then if they overrun by a few minutes it won't matter."

Do you have a story? We want to hear it! Get in touch at grace.hoffman@reachplc.com

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