I don't know if anyone can help but I thought it was worth asking.

There are a couple of girls who have been causing trouble in my neighbourhood. They sit outside people's houses (not their own...) playing loud, obnoxious music (music in the loosest sense of the term!) and I actually only got them to stop sitting directly outside my house by threatening to confiscate the mobile they were listening to music on.

They are also the prime suspects/almost-definites/definites for a range of minor vandalism round here - tipping over plant pots, wrecking the little girl next door's snowman, throwing jelly at a neighbour's door, damaging the wall around the parking area, throwing gravel, graffiti etc. (these kids are about 11...!!)

I am keeping a record of any incidents just so if it comes down to it we can show that it's ongoing. We need neighbours need to work together to see what, if anything, can be done.

Tonight they were back with some friends after a week or two's peace, and causing more trouble: they were shouting abuse at one of my neighbours along with more of the usual.

We spoke to the police, I think last we heard someone would come visit all of us in the next few days. Apparently others have made complaints along with myself and my immediate neighbours.

It's really intimidating especially for the three women, myself included, who live alone along our bit of the road. There are also a couple of elderly women at the end of my block - fortunately I think because there's nowhere to sit outside their houses they don't get so much trouble from them/it's not straight outside their houses.

They only left tonight because it started to rain.

Does anyone know what legal measures can actually be taken? Do we just keep trying to move them on, keep reporting them when they go beyond the pale? What do we do? What can we do??

Defintiely keep reporting to police, keep a diary, maybe try and get pictorial evidence ie. video camera/take pictures what they're doing. sorry this is happening

This is exactly what we've been going through with kids from our local school. Rocks, yelling, abusive songs...and worse, which I won't give details of.

This is what worked.
1) Good luck - construction started right over the road from us, which discourages kids from hanging round.
2) Setting up video cameras, preferably with a microphone. The microphone needs to be kept out of rain, though. Our neighbourhood associated arranged this for us as a loan for a few weeks, and it was enough to make the kids change their route home. This was surprisingly effective.
3) Discussed with neighbourhood/residents' association, who started coming past our house in droves.
4) Discussed with school. This was variably successful. The principal was more interested in avoiding claims, but while he was weaseling, his staff ran out of the staffroom and came to help us, and that was enough to put the less dedicated rabble-rousers off. Teachers started dropping by our house after school and moving kids on...
5) Discussed with police. You'd be surprised how much police know about the kids probably - they may even know who they are before you even describe them. Police told us to call them immediately if incidents occurred, no matter how trivial - don't wait till they're really over the top. (This is Japan, mind you, but there's always hope).
6) Keeping a record - DEFINITELY.

Keep records and all that , and do what the police advises.
There are a lot of those kind of kids in my naighibourhood, only they ride mini-motos at night, and graphity on almost every empty house. At least it's better now exept for the graphity

graphity ?

I couldn't be bothered to check the spelling

Try graffiti.

Yep thats the right one

Pray for more rain?

Seriously, you have my sympathy. We had similar challenges at our old house, and did most of the things you describe above. Eventually the kids got bored of our little area and moved on somewhere else.

This may sound silly but have you tried talking to the kids themselves. In a group they are often intimidating, but talk to them and they see you as a person, and vice versa.

We have a group of young kids who often play football at the end of our road. I know who they all are, and furthermore I know their parents. If they start causing a nuisance, I tell them calmy why and they normally apologise and modify what they do.

In one case it was a point of safety. Understandibly footballs go under cars, but I've asked them to ring on the doorbell and ask me to retrieve footballs that go under my cars. Why- because they don't know when they were last driven, and I wouldn't want them to burn themselves on the engine block.

I patch-up other peoples kids when they have accidents, and go out if I ever see they are hurt. The result- I'm not seen as the enemy.

OK these kids are under 11, and I'm an adult, but by saying Hi, and recognising these young people as people, it defuses the situation tremendously.

You have my sympathy. How long has this been going on?

The thought has entered my mind

Thanks for the support and advice, folks. Shan't attempt to answer everything now - am completely knackered. But I really appreciate it.

I think that the nlimits on what you can legally do to children like that are far too strict.
I my self have never experienced that, but all I could suggest would be keep reporting to the police/Local society. Hope it gets sorted.

Nice idea and if it works - well done. My husband tried to talk politely and in a friendly way to a group who were causing trouble where we live and all he got back were four-letter words and sullen looks. Later that night we discovered his car covered with eggs and though we don't know it was them, we cannot think who else would have suddenly taken it into their heads to behave like this.

He's said he'll go straight to the local police in future - apart from anything else, one of the group showed himself to be physically aggressive, presumably to show he meant business. However community spirited we may all feel, risking personal injury is pretty daunting.

The sad thing is, until the present adults of this land (including ourselves) do stand up to be counted and say "enough is enough" and find the time to present alternatives for these kids (who are often just seriously neglected and bored) we're not going to sort the problem. Difficult really. I have the utmost admiration for those who are trying to run local youth groups etc. Not easy these days.

Yes, that's the problem we have - they don't care how you treat them - they don't want to know.

I think sometimes the parents have a lot to answer for - the teens causing trouble here last night have been a problem before: my neighbour went to one of their mums who said "oh yes, she pulls down my wall too" as if that made it OK - and the other laughed in her face.

That's awful, the goverment need to do something about that, there are too many girls who have children at 15 and let them grow into yobs.

There are loads of people like this at my school. They mostly have major attitude problems. I would invest in a large water pistol and a large scary dog. The gates at my school have been painted with special paint that doesn't dry so if you climb over the gate you get covered with it. Maybe you could piant the wall with that. Good luck.

Hehehe, I like the way you think, WelshClarinet!!

That seems like a good idea, if it's true.

Thats a very narrow minded attitude, and very unfair on single mums, some shose off spring do not yurn out to be yobs, although I'll agree that the statistics do suggest that teenage mums are more likely to come from a home where the first baby was born to a teenage mum.

If communicating with the little darlin's doesn't work then involving your community PC is the only way forward. It also depends on the way you communicate with them. My husband dropped something out of his shopping bag outside our local coop. the local "youff" were out there, and rushed up to him with "hey mister, you dropped this." He smiled and said thank you, then waved as his pulled out of the car-park

In our village a youth involvement scheme has started to try and give young people thingg to do other than gather in groups around the village making a nuisance of themselves. I wish them every success.

As for the parents having the problem, they probably do, but sometime they way people approach this can sound patronising.

I know a lovely single mum with a "difficult child" (he has ADHD amongst other things) I got to know her when her neighbours cat was runover and, when I tried to move it to get it to the vet it died in my arms. Suddenly I wasn't this middle-class stuck up parent, I was a human being. We often talk about our children and the problems we face. Particularly in her case with people thinking ill of her due to her son's problems. She could just laugh in my face when there's a problem with her son, but she doesn't, but I know she hates to be prejudged.

This is a really complicated problem, and needs careful handling. But if you get known as a person who is seen to understand these kids, then playing music outside your house is not going to appeal to them so much.

Throw cyanide bombs at the little monsters or burn tracksuits/smash a mobile in front of them and make a point

Have you tried opening the window wide open and play classical music as loud as possible? It's like it burns their skin or something.

Anyway, I don't think these people want a friendly chat. Calling the police has it's downsides as well. If they are caught doing something which they shoudn't be and are given an ASBO they have two choices: realise what they're doing is wrong and stop or carry on doing it because they've got an ASBO and they're big now innit?

Does this pass for 'legal' in Liverpool?

Yes, that is a huge generalisation

I've just found that letting other people know your a person too, and recognising them as members of the same species tends to defuse situations. But you cannot come across as patronising. A quick hi, and in through the front door is enough to start off with.

Then identify the music they're playing and put them off guard by asking who do they prefer group x or group y. If they ask you why, then come in for a killer blow with something like, thats funny because I've heard you listening to a lot of group y's music outside these last few weeks.

These people do not care if you are a human being or not. All they care about is 'you adult, me child, we different'. It will make you look even more stupid if you try to talk to them. Let's face it, you have no idea what music they are listening to, the UK garage scene is massive, new artists are coming everyday and you can download them off the internet easily.

The people you may have seen might just be playing football with no intention of causing damage. The people Sarah are talking about are very different. They love the rush they get when they do this stuff.

I hate the attitudes of those sort of kids.

Call in some professional muscle to scare them off your turf. Or, for a small fee, I can make them go on a looooooong holiday.....

Tried! Managed to make them run down the batteries in the mobile phone they were listening to music on, trying to compete with the volume I produced...


I'll bear that in mind.

Sadly, these kids don't want to see us as human or with rights. It just ain't going to happen.

Practise the violin at them.

Better still, throw a viola at them.

I have been today - it's been quiet... I was wondering if the two facts were linked


My viola's too nice to be wasted like that

Having counselled for some years at a Youth Project in a town which the local council uses to house its "problem families", I know that it is possible to reach at least some of these kids through courtesy, friendliness and an unconditional positive regard for them, as Jod is suggesting. The difficulty comes when they are in a group with their mates though. They won't want to show the slightest sign of vulnerability in front of each other, and it will take guts for one of them to say "I like her, she doesn't talk to me like I'm a piece of sh-1-t." They may well also mistrust any positive attention they receive, as it sounds like they already resort to negative means to get their attention needs met; this suggests that they aren't receiving much, if any, positive attention therefore they won't really know what to do with it when they do get it.

I'm sorry that you have this problem on your doorstep Sarah, and I hope they find somewhere else to hang out before too long.

Amber
x

Probably would

So sorry you're having this trouble sarah_flute! It's maddening. There are lots of good kids around us who do the usual kid stuff of making a mess and a noise but you know it's just because they're kids and haven't figured out it's a nuisance. Then you get the odd few who know d(*(*m well how much of a pain they are and also know that you can't turn the hose on them (which is what I'd REALLY like to do).
It seems that every "right" answer has a downside - calling the police causing more aggro and so on. I like the loud classical music idea - after all, it's been shown to work with thugs at railway stations....

These children can only learn from the adults around them. As Jod says we need to talk to them and set a positive example. There's a couple of kids near me - only aged 9/10 - that are pretty mean spirited and they call my son names. But I still made a point of saying hi to them and having a chat with them when I saw them in the park the other day. They can only learn from what they see around them.

I think the people Jod says hi too could easily become like the people upsetting sarah-flute if left to their own devices and ignored by the adults around them.

I also feel intimidated by large groups of children, but I wouldn't let them know I felt like that!!

Sarah-flute - did you try saying something along the lines of "that music's a bit too loud for me, can you turn it down or listen somewhere else please?" I'm not assuming you didn't and I don't expect that that would always work, but that sort of thing has worked for me on the very few occasions I've felt that I needed to say something like that to children I don't know. They usually make a small gesture of defiance (carry on for a couple of minutes/ say something rude) which I ignore, then wander off.

This is indeed a difficult area to deal with-sorry I haven't got lots of different advice other than that you've already been given-my main thoughts are;

Does your local police have a community liason officer/or officer in charge of liasing with neighourhood watch? That might be a way forward. I think a large part of the problem is in the lack of community nowadays in lots of areas- which lets behaviour like that just carry on in the knowledge that the police can't be there all the time. Where I live, there are only 2 or 3 neighbours who I exchange more than a nod to-this can cause such a lot of isolation, general apathy and lack of community spirit in tackling problems.

I like the classical music idea. I saw a few articles that people of this mentallity will be scared off by some proper music, like Mozart, Haydn, that sort of stuff. Good excuse to have Classical music in train stations, shops Dig out those Mozart CDs.

Yes, I think those sort of kids don't hear any classical music, and don't play any instruments.(well, maby electric guitar)

Toys R Us, etc, are selling those huge water guns off cheaply now, as it's nearing the end of the season. Buy a few and supply all your neighbours with one each. Make sure the water's really cold.

Maybe not Mozart. I'd go for something operatic (Wagner probably being the best), or some very new music - watch them run away from loud Boulez or Stockhausen

Pavarotti, with the water guns blazing in time to the music.

Wagner would scare me away!

Me too! *hides from Dame Deborah*

Uh-oh, we will be in trouble when Deborah sees this!

I hope she doesn't whack us with her clarinet!

What an image!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bu...rts/4836068.stm

Wagner scares me too - but I'm not exactly yoof-ful; I agree, go for Mozart. Not only scary for them, but a pleasure for you at the same time.