Florida homeowner asks neighborhood kids to stop playing in their backyard—the parents refuse to step in, then the kids set up a baseball diamond in their backyard completely uninvited: 'The neighbor’s response didn’t really sit right with me'

For this reason, seeing kids playing a pickup game of baseball is always something that will warm my heart. However, while it's one thing to appreciate the love of the game, how would you feel about the neighbors' kids setting up in your backyard, completely uninvited, to play a pickup game of baseball? This might be something that irks a lot of people. Me included. 

While you'd love to be relaxed about it, you'd have to have a lot of history with those neighbors and consider them close family friends in order to be ok. There are just too many things that could go wrong, and when someone else's kids are playing unattended on your property, liability can become a real concern without that trust already being there. That and there's no telling what damage might be done to carefully maintained and landscaped lawns, flowers, and crops in the garden.

These kids were getting into the baseball spirit. But kept going into the homeowner's backyard without asking or being invited first. This drove the homeowners to the end of their sanity and they ended up getting the cops involved. While you don't want to be one of those grouchy neighbors who won't return a kid's ball, you have to think that there is definitely a foul line there somewhere in the grass way before you get to playing in the backyard uninvited.

AITA for not wanting my neighbors’ kids and their friends using our yard as their own?

This homeowner and her husband purchased property in Florida and quickly began having trouble with some neighbors. Specifically, the neighbors coming onto their property without invitation

My husband and I recently bought a home in Florida, and we’ve been dealing with an ongoing situation involving our neighbors’ children and other kids coming onto our property.

Though the neighbors were otherwise good neighbors and amicable, the kids repeatedly came onto the property, and the parents did nothing to stop it.

For some background, our neighbors aren’t necessarily bad people. They’ve been friendly toward us before, and we don’t have any personal issues with them. However, we’ve noticed their children and their friends repeatedly coming onto our property.

The homeowner added here that they didn't feel they were being too black or white. They weren't like the neighbors in “The Sandlot” where any ball going over the fence became property of “The Beast” and was effectively a lost cause.

But they had boundaries that happened to be a literal and physical boundary, and they wanted it to be respected.

To clarify, we have absolutely no problem with the children coming into our yard to retrieve a ball and then going back to playing in their own yard. 

We understand that kids play outside and balls occasionally end up on someone else’s property. That’s not the issue.

The issue is that boundary was repeatedly pushed. With the kids actually setting up a baseball diamond in their backyard in order to play.

The issue is that they’ve gone beyond simply retrieving a ball. They’ve actually set up baseball bases and started playing in our yard as though it’s an extension of theirs. We’ve also seen three kids, including what appeared to be their friends or other children, walking through our backyard.

When they contacted the neighbors, the kids' parents, they didn't feel they were being taken seriously.

That’s where we draw the line. We don’t share a yard, and we don’t want our property being used as a playground or walkway without permission. My husband eventually contacted the neighbor to address the situation and explain that we don’t want the children using our property to play. We weren’t trying to start an argument. We just wanted to establish boundaries.
The neighbor’s response didn’t really sit right with me because I felt like our concerns weren’t being taken seriously. 

When the kids refused to stop entering the property, they got the police involved.

We understand that children will be children, but I don’t believe that means they should be allowed to use someone else’s property however they please.
Eventually, we contacted the sheriff’s office about the situation.

The responding officer explained that children entering our yard just to retrieve a ball wouldn’t necessarily be treated as criminal trespassing. He also mentioned something about malicious intent being necessary, which confused me because I thought entering someone’s property after being told not to could potentially constitute trespassing under Florida law.

They were frustrated with the response and this left them wondering whether they were being petty.

We were also told that if we continued calling over what the department considered petty situations, we could potentially be placed on some type of do-not-call or do-not-respond list. What frustrated me about that conversation is that our issue was never simply about a child retrieving a ball. It was about children setting up to play on our property and other kids walking through our backyard without permission.

I genuinely want outside opinions because we’re not trying to be difficult neighbors. We just don’t want our yard treated like shared property when it isn’t.

The homeowner also had this to say to add additional context in a comment on her original post:

Own-Topic3621
Original Poster

To also add prior to the sheriffs being called we’ve spoke to them 3 times about randomly walking through our yard. We’ve also dealt with past issues with other people walking through our yard as well as a dr*** man trying unlock our front door.